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ChoicePoint admits to 10,000 FL victims

ChoicePoint was just gonna notify California victims and leave everyone else hanging, but then word got around, and the company is now scrambling to save face.

The personal information of more than 10,000 Floridians -- things such as birthdays and bank account numbers -- was released to identity thieves in a massive security breach.

It's the kind of information that can be used to create credit card accounts or drain bank accounts.

Overall, 145,000 people living in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and three U.S. territories will receive warning letters, which will be sent out by the end of the week. Only California and Texas had more people affected than Florida. California authorities estimate a half-million people could have had their information stolen.

The announcement Monday from the data broker ChoicePoint comes in the wake of revelations last week that criminals posing as legitimate businesses in California were able to gain access to 19 billion pieces of information on individuals.

ChoicePoint is one of several companies that gather personal information on people, then package and sell it for profit. Its mishandling of that information has set off a political firestorm from California to Washington, with some public officials calling for stepped-up regulation.
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ChoicePoint is one of the largest warehouses of personal data in the country. The Georgia-based company keeps a massive store of records that includes everything from an individual's date of birth and Social Security number to their employment history and driving records. Employers, loan officers, law enforcement and media outlets, among others, pay ChoicePoint for access to its databases.

Companies like ChoicePoint, said Linda Foley, co-executive director of the California identity theft center, ``know as much about you as God does.''

SCANDAL NOTIFICATION

Now, in an effort to contain the widening scandal, ChoicePoint is sending letters to everyone whose information may have been given to a fraud ring. It asks people to call a toll-free number and urges consumers to check their credit reports for suspicious activity.
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Publicly-held ChoicePoint is no stranger to controversy.

In 2000, it bought Boca Raton-based DBT, a data collection company that had its contracts with the Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI suspended because its founder was once suspected of ties to Bahamian drug smugglers. DBT also was hired to help build Florida's infamous felon list for the 2000 presidential election. Many of those people, who were purged from voter rolls, were actually eligible to vote.

The breach was first discovered in October, ChoicePoint said, when it detected signs of fraudulent activity in the Los Angeles area. But it said that city authorities asked the company to not notify individuals because of a pending investigation.

In late January, it said it was cleared to begin notifying Californians. In connection with the fraud, a Nigerian citizen last week pleaded no contest in California state court and was sentenced to 16 months in prison.

PRIVACY LEGISLATION

Only California has a law requiring data collection agencies to immediately notify people when their personal information has been stolen or given to suspicious groups.

If not for California’s law, no one would have ever found out about this. And that “immediate” notification clause seems to have been stretched to the limit, as most of the stolen information was delivered to the thieves (by ChoicePoint itself) last summer.

They are only notifying victims from other states now due to pressure from at least 38 Attorneys General.

Hmmm... California officials estimate 500,000 and ChoicePoint claims “only” 145,000. Ultimately, it may turn out that many more than 10,000 Floridians were affected.