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LexisNexis is sick of all the press ChoicePoint is getting and decided yesterday to one-up its competitor.
LexisNexis announced yesterday that almost ten times as many people were affected by a recent data spill. LexisNexis originally said intruders had gotten at sensitive data on 32,000 Americans. The company says that number is actually 310,000.
By comparison, ChoicePoint was able to put only 150,000 or so Americans at risk of data theft.
The breach occured when unspecified, unathorized parties used legitimate passwords to get data from Seisint, a data profiling firm it recently bought. Seisint is best known as the company that ran the controversial Matrix, a federal government-funded tool that allows police to pull up detailed dossiers on suspects.
Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey is pissed and he has a email list.
“How many times must Americans have their most private information: tax records, social security numbers, financial information, health records handed over to thieves in order for companies like LexisNexis to start establishing protections for consumers?” asked Representative Ed Markey.
“LexisNexis has turned a blind eye to protecting its customers, once again. There is no excuse for their lack of action – this abuse of privacy of hundreds of thousands of Americans must stop. The identities of Americans are valued personal possessions, not some product to be carelessly bought and sold and tossed to the wind when they are not useful to these companies.”
I don't know about you but data leak stories are getting really old, though this one-ups-manship is a pretty media savvy way for LexisNexis to revive this debate post-Schiavo-Pope.
Posted by Ryan Singel at April 12, 2005 09:27 AM
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» Choicepoint, April 9-12 from Emergent Chaos
The Daily Caveat tells us that "Choicepoint Changes Access to Personal Data, and Research News has more. No word on what level of audits Choicepoint will be doing. It sounds like there will be a pulldown menu or checkboxes... [Read More]
Tracked on April 12, 2005 03:44 PM