Poor embattled Choicepoint. The Atlanta-based company that profits from invading the privacy of the average joe, accumulating databases full of personal information, and selling those secrets to anyone with cash and a pulse is coming under fire for its dodgy business practices. Practices such as failing to screen customers who utilize information to commit identity theft. Not to mention much of the data is incorrect. A gentleman who purchased his 20 page lifetime file discovered that, according to Choicepoint, he had died in 1978.
A visit to Choicepoint's website reveals nothing about the Big-Brother data collecting vacuum. Rather, visitors are bombarded with one of the following full screen photos:
- a puppy snuggles with a small smiling child on a sun-lit field
- multi-racial children frolic in a field
- an African-American grandmother pushes her grand-daughter on a bicycle
- multi-racial children join hands in a circle
- two Asian children enjoy a swingset
Strangely, while the photos appear to pop up randomly upon refreshing the browser, the one with the Asians on the swings rarely appears.
Law enforcement officials love Choicepoint because it offers them information on suspects which they themselves would find difficult to obtain or utilize in a criminal prosecution due to 4th Amendment constraints. Criminals love it because it gives them a dossier on over 100 million "marks" including former addresses, friends, employers, business assets, and criminal histories.
What makes Choicepoint downright scary is the bulk of information compiled by the company on every citizen in the United States. Hypothetically, an i.d. thief could hack the bank account password of a person by reporting a lost or stolen ID/Password combination and providing an answer to that person's "special question" such as your mother's maiden name or the name of the first street you lived on. TKID4 always uses as his special question, the first time you had intercourse. The answer of course is "Miller Time."
Consumers are faced with one of two options. One is to diligently review all credit card and bank statements to detect any possible ID theft. The other is to provide as much mis-information to companies, municipalities, friends and family as possible so that Choicepoint's coffers will overflow with bunk. Then when an ID thief purchases your record to discover that you are married to a man called "Colonel Rhombus" who is CEO of Anacott Steel, no harm will come to you. TKID4 has been practicing the latter for years for fun. Now, its business.
