Info Breach ChoicePoint Firm in Hot Seat

Consumer data collector ChoicePoint Inc. says its 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. “They’re not doing the very thing they claim their service enables their customers to achieve.”

Formed in 1997 as a spinoff of credit reporting agency Equifax, Alpharetta, Ga.-based ChoicePoint has rapidly grown beyond its roots of analyzing insurance claims information to become a clearinghouse for personal data on hundreds of millions of people.

The 19 billion public records in its database at its suburban Atlanta headquarters include everything from motor vehicle registrations, license and deed transfers, military records, names, addresses and Social Security numbers.

To a debt-collection firm, a company checking the background of a prospective employee, a journalist or a law enforcement agency, the one-stop shop ChoicePoint offers for obtaining personal information can be a lofty enterprise. To a criminal stealing identities, it’s a gold mine.

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