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IF you found yourself running a company suddenly branded one of the most reviled in the country ? if, for example, you noticed that visitors to Consumerist.com, a heavily visited consumer Web site, voted yours as the second ?worst company in America? and you had just been awarded the 2005 ?Lifetime Menace Award? by the human rights group Privacy International ? you might feel obliged to take extraordinary steps. You might even want to reach out to your most vocal critics and ask them, ?What are we doing wrong?? So it was in early 2005 that Douglas C. Curling, the...

Testimony of Beth McConnell Director, Pennsylvania Public Interest Group Education Fund On behalf of United States Public Interest Research Group, Consumer Federation of America, National Consumer Law Center Before the Internal Revenue Service Public Hearing, April 4th, 2006 Regarding Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Amendments to Section 7216 Regulations and Revenue Guidance 26 CFR Part 301 [REG-137243-02] RIN-1545-BA96 and Revenue Procedure 2005-93 [Notice 2005-93] Good morning. My name is Beth McConnell, and I’m the director of the Pennsylvania Public Interest Research Group Education Fund (PennPIRG Education Fund). I am also offering comments today on behalf of U.S.PIRG, the National Consumer Law...

The City of Milwaukee has dropped about 105,000 names from its voter rolls after completing the first purge since 2001, city officials said Tuesday. That represents about 23% of the 450,000 names that had been on the rolls. Officials had said they were unsure if a purge of the rolls had been conducted after the 2000 election. The names primarily were people who had moved, said Neil Albrecht, assistant director of the Election Commission. The question of inaccuracies on the voter list came up after the 2004 election, when many problems were uncovered in the city's election system. Election officials...

Guilty Plea in ChoicePoint Data Theft By Martin H. Bosworth ConsumerAffairs.Com December 28, 2005 The alleged culprit behind the ChoicePoint data breach, which compromised the personal information of 145,000 people, has entered a guilty plea to charges of conspiracy and grand theft. Nigerian-born Olatunji Oluwatosin, of Los Angeles, is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 10. Oluwatosin is already serving a 16-month prison term for a previous felony count of identity theft, to which he pleaded no contest. Oluwatosin was considered part of a larger conspiracy, one of several individuals who gained access to ChoicePoint's database of consumer records. However,...

Nigerian man now accused on 22 counts LOS ANGELES - Authorities unsealed a grand jury indictment Tuesday that charges a Nigerian man with multiple counts of identity theft and other crimes in connection with personal information stolen from consumer data collector ChoicePoint Inc. The indictment, returned by a grand jury in Los Angeles last week, accuses Olatunji Oluwatosin of 22 counts of identity theft, conspiracy, grand theft and credit card fraud, prosecutors said. The scheme cost at least $4 million in damages and involved 16 victims and five banks or credit card companies, District Attorney Steve Cooley said. The new...

Ignoring a growing online protest by California consumers, the attorney general has awarded an $845,000 contract to data broker ChoicePoint Inc. to develop a computer system to track suspected criminals and terrorists. The Department of General Services, ending a two-month delay, signed the deal with Atlanta-based ChoicePoint after it was approved by the Finance Department in late June, said Finance spokesman H.D. Palmer. ChoicePoint won the state work despite being under investigation by both state and federal regulators for its handling of a major security breach. After a competitive bidding process this spring, ChoicePoint emerged the winner to develop a...

Three or four days a week, Darren Hiers gets lunch at a Sterling convenience store near the car dealership where he works. He grabs a chicken sandwich and a soda and heads to the checkout counter, where a little gadget scans his index finger and instantly deducts the money from his checking account. Hiers doesn't have to pull out his wallet to buy lunch -- and if it were up to him, he'd never have to write a check or swipe a credit card again. The finger scan used at the shop in Sterling, known as a biometric payment system...

Some good might actually come out of all of these recent data mishaps. Politicians are starting to realize that permitting data brokers like Acxiom and ChoicePoint to buy and sell your Social Security number like a raffle ticket may not be that wise after all. Some members of Congress, like Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, have been warning about the dangers of SSN misuse for years. The surprise now is that some key congressional figures are agreeing.

Legislatures in more than two dozen states are considering ways to give consumers more control over personal information that is collected and sold by private firms, but many of the proposals are drawing fire from financial services companies. Bills are on the table in 28 states responding to a series of high-profile security breaches at information brokers, banks and universities that so far this year have resulted in more than 1 million Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, names and addresses falling into the hands of potential identity thieves. In the most recent case, a medical group in San Jose...

WASHINGTON - ChoicePoint's chief executive apologized Tuesday to 145,000 customers exposed to identity theft but he had difficulty convincing some lawmakers the company was doing enough to resolve the problem. Derek Smith's testimony before a House Energy and Commerce Committee panel was the first congressional appearance by a ChoicePoint executive since the data broker based in Alpharetta, Ga., disclosed last month that an enormous security breach compromised private information of Americans across the country. "Let me begin by offering an apology on behalf of our company and my own personal apology to those consumers whose information may have been accessed...

Members of Congress grilled ChoicePoint CEO Derek Smith on Tuesday, demanding the company do more to protect customers in the wake of the massive information leak at the database giant. "The incident has caused us to go through some serious soul searching," Smith said, testifying at a hearing held by the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection. ChoicePoint revealed last month that thieves had accessed the personal information of 145,000 U.S. consumers from the firm. Smith said ChoicePoint has now abandoned part of the data sales market would support some new legislation, including wider notification to victims. Rep....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Seeking to combat rampant identity theft, U.S. lawmakers said on Thursday they may clamp new restrictions on companies that amass and sell social security numbers and other personal information. Executives from ChoicePoint (NYSE:CPS - news) and rival LexisNexis (ELSN.AS)(REL.L) told legislators that they had scaled back the sale of sensitive personal information following revelations in recent weeks that identity thieves gained access to more than 177,000 of the consumer profiles they sell. But lawmakers said during the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee hearing that data brokers should not be allowed to sell Social Security...

The chairman of ChoicePoint, which disclosed the personal information of 145,000 Americans to identity thieves, publicly apologized on Tuesday for the data mishap. ChoicePoint's Derek Smith, also the chief executive, told a congressional committee he wanted to offer an "apology on behalf of our company," which he said would help anyone who suffered identity fraud as a result. The data disclosure has led to 750 known cases of identity fraud so far. The incident "has caused us to undergo some serious soul-searching," Smith said. ChoicePoint is a data warehouse that compiles electronic dossiers on Americans and sells them to insurance...

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - A California man who used personal information from ChoicePoint Inc. and other companies to steal thousands of identities has been sentenced to 5-1/2 years in prison, according to the United States Attorney's office. Adedayo Benson, a 38-year-old Nigerian national, was sentenced Monday after pleading guilty last November to using and conspiring to use fraudulently obtained credit cards, according to the U.S. Attorney's office in Los Angeles, Calif. Benson was also ordered to pay nearly $155,000 in restitution to several financial institutions. Benson's sister, Bibiana Benson, was sentenced to 54 months in federal prison after she pleaded...

Data broker offers no easy way to fix mistakes, either Deborah Pierce held a rare and precious document in her hands. It was the story of her life, as told by ChoicePoint Inc. She wasn't supposed to see it; an anonymous source had smuggled the report to her. But there it was, her "National Comprehensive Report," 20 pages long, a complete dossier of all the digital breadcrumbs she's left behind during her adult life. At least, that's what it was supposed to be. Pierce said she felt an uneasy twinge in her stomach as she began to flip the pages....

LOS ANGELES A Nigerian national who stole the identities of thousands of people has been sentenced to 5 and a half years in federal prison. Adedayo Benson was also ordered in Los Angeles court yesterday to pay nearly 155-thousand dollars in restitution to ten financial companies. He and his sister were arrested in 2002 on charges of tapping into several public records databases, got access to some seven thousand people and used their I-Ds to buy at least a (m) million dollars in merchandise. Authorities say the siblings posed as real estate agents and opened accounts with ChoicePoint, Advantage Financial...

Shareholders are suing ChoicePoint Inc. and its top executives after the company's share price fell sharply following news that identity thieves had gained access to personal information about some U.S. residents that was held by the personal data vendor. A class-action lawsuit has been filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on behalf of those who bought ChoicePoint shares between April 22, 2004, and March 3, 2005, Radnor, Pa.-based law firm Schiffrin & Barroway LLP said in a statement Friday. The suit charges Alpharetta, Ga.-based ChoicePoint and three top executives with keeping key information from the...

ATLANTA - ChoicePoint Inc., a leading data warehouser, says the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating stock sales by its top two executives and the embattled company has decided to stop giving personal information about consumers to small businesses. Its shares tumbled on the news. The dual announcements were made Friday by the Alpharetta, Ga.-based company in a news statement and a regulatory filing. The SEC probe involves sales of stock by chief executive Derek Smith and president Douglas Curling for a $16.6 million profit in the months after the company learned its massive database had been breached and before...

LOS ANGELES -- Two Nigerian-born siblings were arrested in 2002 on charges of tapping into ChoicePoint Inc.'s vast database of personal information, a security breach similar to one announced by the data warehouser last month, a newspaper reported Wednesday. Bibiana Benson, 39, and her brother, Adedayo Benson, 38, gained access to at least 7,000 people and used their identities to buy at least $1 million in merchandise, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing court documents. According to the Times, Bibiana Benson pleaded guilty to opening ChoicePoint accounts in 2000 by using a real estate broker's license and driver's license for...

Feb. 25--Thirteen days after the arrest of a suspect in the ChoicePoint identity theft case -- and more than three months before the problem surfaced publicly -- the company's top two executives began selling their stock. Since the sales began in November, ChoicePoint CEO Derek Smith and President Douglas Curling have sold 472,000 ChoicePoint shares worth nearly $21 million, according to the executives' Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Smith said Thursday that he did not know about the security breach at the Alpharetta-based company until well after he began selling the stock. Curling was not available for comment Thursday. The...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Senate committee will hold hearings on identity theft and information brokers following the revelation that a databank with information on millions of people was accessed by criminals, the committee chairman said Thursday. Democrats, including Sens. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Dianne Feinstein of California and Charles Schumer of New York, have been calling for a Judiciary Committee inquiry into whether more regulation of companies such as ChoicePoint Inc. that buy and sell personal data is needed. "I got a letter from Senator Leahy yesterday on identity theft issue and I immediately said we can hold a hearing,"...

LOS ANGELES - A Nigerian man accused of stealing from data warehouser ChoicePoint Inc. information that could be used in identity theft pleaded no contest Thursday and was sentenced to 16 months in state prison. The case against Olatunji Oluwatosin, 41, was part of a "much larger investigation" into allegations of fraudulent access to the data-gathering company's personal information database, the county district attorney's office said in a statement. ChoicePoint acknowledged this week that thieves apparently used previously stolen identities to create bogus businesses and open 50 accounts with ChoicePoint. The thieves obtained volumes of data on consumers, including names,...

At Least 700 Have Identities Stolen SAN FRANCISCO - At least 700 people had their identities stolen during a yearlong scam by con artists who had signed up as clients of data-broker ChoicePoint Inc., the Los Angeles task force in charge of the criminal investigation confirmed on Friday When word first emerged this week that still unknown scammers had illegally obtained detailed dossiers on 35,000 people by posing as legitimate customers of ChoicePoint, the company portrayed it as a relatively minor criminal case, limited to California. But by week's end, it was shaping up to be a full-blown scandal with...

CHOICEPOINT UPDATE....It turns out that the massive identify theft scam at ChoicePoint happened last October — but nobody got notified until last week. And even that never would have happened if not for the fact that California has a law requiring disclosure of leakage of personal information. Security expert Bruce Schneier says the same thing is likely to happen again unless economic incentives are brought to bear: ChoicePoint protects its data, but only to the extent that it values it. The hundreds of millions of people in ChoicePoint's databases are not ChoicePoint's customers. They have no power to switch credit...

ChoicePoint Inc., under fire for being duped into allowing criminals to access its massive database of personal information, said Monday that it will send out nearly 6,000 notices to Connecticut residents whose records it sold to suspected thieves in 2004. The Georgia-based company said that a ring of thieves set up accounts using 50 fake business names to mine ChoicePoint's extensive database. The company sells criminal, bankruptcy, credit histories and a variety of other records to companies that set up accounts with it. The company logged more than $900 million in revenues in 2004, according to a U.S. Securities and...

The following is a breakdown supplied by data warehouser ChoicePoint Inc. of the number of warning notices it sent to residents in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and three U.S. territories who may have been affected by a breach in which criminals gained access to the company's massive database of personal information. Alaska: 251 Alabama: 1,338 Arkansas: 696 Arizona: 1,730 California: 34,114 Colorado: 4,500 Connecticut: 5,952 District of Columbia: 338 Delaware: 1,072 Florida: 10,216 Georgia: 2,805 Guam: 4 Hawaii: 677 Iowa: 809 Idaho: 3,216 Illinois: 5,025 Indiana: 2,307 Kansas: 1,613 Kentucky: 2,130 Louisiana: 1,261 Massachusetts: 1,122 Maine: 257...

By now, most of you should have heard about Choicepoint discovering that over 145,000 consumer data records have been compromised and obtained illegally. The original release of the information stated only 35,000 people were affected. Today, we learned it was much worse. I have taken a particlar interest in this story for several reasons: (1) I am an executive in the credit/collection industry (2) I am an American citizen. As a member of the industry, I do not find it at all shocking to learn that Choicepoint has failed to properly vet the companies they are selling consumer data to....

Criminals posing as legitimate businesses have accessed critical personal data stored by ChoicePoint Inc., a firm that maintains databases of background information on virtually every U.S. citizen, MSNBC.com has learned.

It began in 1997 as a company that sold credit data to the insurance industry. But over the next seven years, as it acquired dozens of other companies, Alpharetta, Ga.-based ChoicePoint Inc. became an all-purpose commercial source of personal information about Americans, with billions of details about their homes, cars, relatives, criminal records and other aspects of their lives. As its dossier grew, so did the number of ChoicePoint's government and corporate clients, jumping from 1,000 to more than 50,000 today. Company stock once worth about $500 million ballooned to $4.1 billion.

BOSTON -- A police officer stops you on the street, then taps something into a device in the palm of his hand. The next minute, he knows who your relatives are, who lives in your house, who your neighbors are, the kind of car you drive or boat you own, whether you've been sued and various other tidbits about your life. Science fiction? Hardly. A growing number of police departments now have instant access via hand-held wireless devices to vast commercial databases that contain details on just about anyone officers encounter on the beat. In a time of terrorism worries,...

<p>Beyond the gallon jars of mayonnaise and the office furniture, shoppers browsing the aisles at some Sam's Club stores will find something that isn't usually sold at retail -- an employee background check in a box.</p> <p>"Make better hiring decisions," says the package, a little smaller than a box of breakfast cereal. "Conduct background checks quickly and easily!"</p>

Over the past 18 months, the U.S. government has bought access to data on hundreds of millions of residents of 10 Latin American countries -- apparently without their consent or knowledge -- allowing myriad federal agencies to track foreigners entering and living in the United States. A suburban Atlanta company, ChoicePoint Inc., collects the information abroad and sells it to U.S. government officials in three dozen agencies, including immigration investigators who've used it to arrest illegal immigrants. The practice broadens a trend that has an information-hungry U.S. government increasingly buying personal data on Americans and foreigners alike from commercial vendors...