LexisNexis says credit card fraudsters used its data

Belated notice to 32,000

By Dan Goodin, 5th May 2009

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

LexisNexis is in the process of warning at least 32,000 people that their social security numbers and other personal information may have been stolen by identity thieves who used the company's information retrieval service.

The identity thieves operated as business customers of LexisNexis and ChoicePoint, which LexisNexis's parent company, Reed Elsevier, acquired last year, according to a notification letter LexisNexis sent to at least 32,000 people who may have been affected. While the theft occurred between June 2004 and October 2007, LexisNexis withheld any kind of warning until now at the request of US Postal Inspection Service, the letter said.

The identity thieves set up fake mail boxes and used the information stolen from the companies to obtain credit cards in the victims' names.

"These individuals were operating businesses that at one time were both ChoicePoint and LexisNexis customers," the company warned in the notification letter. LexisNexis and ChoicePoint have been the targets of repeated data breaches in the past, but the companies never disclosed them to victims because no law required them to do so, executives from both outfits confessed in 2005.

In the most recent breach, a third company called Investigative Professions was hit by the same scammer, according to CBS News, which first reported the notification letters. The perpetrator is believed to be a Nigerian Scam artist who used the information to make fraudulent charges on victims' credit cards, the news service said. ®

Agentless Backup is Not a Myth

COMMENTS

House Rules Send Corrections

All Reader Comments (2)

Latest Comments

Posted Friday 15th May 2009 21:27 GMT

Anonymous Coward

Also........

There was a 60min or a 48 investigative report that found that these hacked accounts are also used by black hat investigative services that DO ANYTHING to get the data they need to further their own investigations.

These so callle blachat investigators operate under the law and this report showed that they are normally hired to do these things by jealous wives investigating cheating husbands or employers who go far and deep into their employees private lives to find ANYTHING no matter how small for a reason to fire them. It was also found that some insurance companies and police force use their service when on a cold case.

I suspect that these data thieves will always be around until the end of time and these Data information warehouses really do not care that much when training their employees against SOCIAL ENGINEERING.....

They keep soocial engineering out of the traning manual and videos.

Posted Tuesday 5th May 2009 10:20 GMT

Anonymous Coward

Data Breach occurred when Choice point got the data

The data breach occurred when data went from the private citizen to ChoicePoint. Just because ChoicePoint and Lexis Nexis WANT the data, doesn't mean they should be entitled to it.

ChoicePoint in particular was a key data provider for the Florida 2000 'electoral roll scrubbing' and the dirty 2006 Mexican elections.

Source:

http://www.gregpalast.com/stealing-mexico/

So you don't want your private data in the hands of such a company because that data is then used to disenfranchise you in elections, or worse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChoicePoint

"The growing role of ChoicePoint and other data aggregation companies in performing national security functions previously solely the preserve of government organisations was highlighted in 2003, following the disclosure that ChoicePoint had purchased Mexico's entire roll of 65 million registered voters as well as six million licensed drivers in Mexico City as part of a US$67 million contract with the US Department of Justice."

"Under the contract commencing 25 September 2001, ChoicePoint was charged by the US Government to assist the surveillance of Latin Americans, including the citizens of Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua.[17]."

"...It is claimed that this data may have been used by the US Government to influence the 2006 elections in Mexico.[20] It is alleged that members of the conservative Pan ruling party had obtained voter registration lists allegedly only available to election officials. The Pan party had received assistance in conducting its campaign from the International Republican Institute, an organisation funded by the US Government and staffed by the US Republican Party. The International Republican Institute denied the allegations[21] and ChoicePoint said that has '...no involvement in any election in any country.'"