Word: choicepoint
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...Social Security number, your phone number, your driver's license, your car registration, your credit history, your birth certificate, your real estate deeds, your legal history, your fishing license, your military record, your insurance claims, your thumbprint, your DNA. That is just some of the information that data aggregator ChoicePoint might have collected on you and millions of other Americans...
...problem isn't necessarily that ChoicePoint has those data--although some privacy advocates are wary--but that some bad guys also got hold of them. That's why the nation's largest data miner, whose computers maintain and manipulate 19 billion data files for clients ranging from the Cub Scouts to the CIA, found itself trying to explain last week how a Nigerian con artist posing as several small-business owners could extract data on 145,000 people. "They were careful not to trip the triggers, and they did pay their bills," James Lee, ChoicePoint's chief marketing officer, says...
...scam didn't hack ChoicePoint's network, Lee hastens to point out, a little disingenuously. Nothing so elaborate was necessary. The perp armed himself with phony letterheads and ordered electronic files by fax at $150 a batch. After a number of successful attempts, a ChoicePoint employee finally got wise and alerted police. When cops nabbed Olatunji Oluwatosin, 41, at a Copymat shop in Hollywood, he had five cell phones and three credit cards on him, each under different names. He has pleaded no contest to identity theft, but authorities say others must be involved, since the stolen data have been...
Oluwatosin is keeping his mouth shut, but the breach at ChoicePoint has had politicians in full gumflap. "Our system of protecting people's identity is virtually nonexistent in this country," said Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York. Schumer's staff was able to download personal information on the likes of Dick Cheney and Brad Pitt from a ChoicePoint rival, Westlaw. Nearly 10 million people were victimized last year by identity theft, at a cost of $5 billion. Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, pledged to schedule hearings on the topic. And that was before Bank of America learned...
...company admitted. Just days before Hilton's exposure came to light, Nicholas Jacobsen, 22, pleaded guilty to computer fraud for hacking T-Mobile. He was nabbed in a government investigation of the Internet underworld. Jennifer Granick, executive director of Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society, says the ChoicePoint scam and T-Mobile hack "show that companies don't take seriously the need to keep our information safe." The solution? Don't store any truly sensitive information on a wireless device and, when possible, disable wireless features that connect users to the Net, such as Bluetooth, which can serve...