Thursday, February 17, 2005

ChoicePoint's mission turned on head in personal info breach

The Miami Herald has an interesting article, commenting on the irony of ChoicePoint not doing due diligence on its own customers, allowing criminals to have access to their huge cache of personal information: AP Wire | 02/17/2005 | ChoicePoint's mission turned on head in personal info breach:

"ATLANTA - Consumer data collector ChoicePoint Inc.'s mission is to arm customers with the information necessary to verify that the people they are doing business with are who they say they are.

That selling point has been turned on its head by bandits who were given access to the company's massive database by duping it into thinking they were someone they were not.

'The irony appears to be that ChoicePoint has not done its own due diligence in verifying the identities of those 'businesses' that apply to be customers,' said Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group in San Diego. 'They're not doing the very thing they claim their service enables their customers to achieve.'...."

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