Choicepoint Roundup
- Household Watch has a story:
When Ms. Marshall got a $6,000 home-improvement loan from a credit union in April 2003, she had to pay relatively high interest because of a weak credit score. The credit check had showed a court ruling ordering her to pay overdue rent to a former landlord in a Washington, D.C., suburb. But the judgment had been caused by a court error and vacated by a judge – facts that didn’t make it into her credit history. It turned out that a ChoicePoint contractor at a courthouse hadn’t properly updated the file, and that Equifax, the credit bureau, purchased the erroneous entry from ChoicePoint.
Unfortunately, the suit was thrown out after the errors were fixed. That sort of decision encourages these companies to be sloppy with their data gathering processes. Data processing professionals used to say “Garbage in, garbage out.”
- The LA Times has an article “ID Theft Coverage Draws Criticism.”
- Finally, its been too long, but today Two Minutes Hate comes to you from…The San Jose Mercury News, who says that “Thieves go where the data is — while Congress just fiddles.” (Ironic for a company that insists on collecting data from you, or really, from Bugmenot.)