Advanced Personal Finance

A couple of weeks ago, I requested my entire personal file from Choicepoint. Well, I got the packet in the mail and it’s interesting.

Choicepoint

You may have heard of Choicepoint. As in, “Choicepoint sells personal data of 145,000 people.” Yeah, that Choicepoint.

In case you haven’t, Choicepoint is a company that’s in the information business. They’re this huge data warehouse that collects, packages, and resells information on just about every American (see chart of Choicepoint’s sources of revenue at the end of this post). If you’ve ever been insured, rented an apartment, bought a house, applied for a credit card, been convicted of a crime, or held a job, Choicepoint has a file on you.

I can buy your file from them right now. And it’s all perfectly legal.

Getting your file

So I was reading a book called No Place to Hide (affiliate link). That’s how I learned about Choicepoint and its sister companies. There are lots of these data warehouses, but Choicepoint is the monster of the industry.

Because of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACT), consumers can get a copy of their file from information agencies once every twelve months. Most people know this through getting their credit report from the three bureaus. (If you don’t know about doing so, go here.) The law also applies to these lesser-known reports.

Anyone can fill out a form, provide proof of identity, and get their complete report.

When you request your file, you get back ten different reports. Four of them are insurance-related, several are housing-related, and there are a couple of others.

My file

What I learned from my file was pretty interesting, somewhat alarming, and kind of made me mad.

It was interesting to see all the connections they had for me. They had all my insurance information including claims and coverage (this was one that’s called a CLUE report). There was also a surprisingly detailed history of my residences.

One eye-opening and alarming report showed where and when my Social Security number was issued. It also listed my SSN with the last four X’d out. This was alarming because what’s a common identity verification tool for banks and others? Yeah, the last four digits of your SSN. It also listed my date of birth without the day of the month. Getting a certified copy of your birth certificate would be pretty easy given this information.

The public records search that had this wording:

“Just because a record from someone else appears does not necessarily mean that there is an inaccuracy or fraudulent activity. Some records may appear because another person has lived at the same address and shares the same last name. It is possible that you will receive public record information that matches your name and state, but is not about you.”

Oh. Well. Thanks for your concern, Choicepoint. I couldn’t believe the flippant attitude this statement conveys. It’s possible someone else’s (possibly negative) information could appear on my report, listed as me, but that’s no problem.

It might be no problem for Choicepoint, but can you imagine trying to explain to a potential employer that that judgment against you isn’t really you? That’s if you even got the chance to explain, which is unlikely.

And “Just because a record from someone else appears does not necessarily mean that there is an inaccuracy…” Really? What would count as an inaccuracy?

Having said all that, my file was actually completely accurate (if alarmingly detailed). So I have that going for me…which is nice.

(click to enlarge image - image courtesy Choicepoint)

Share This

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 at 8:48 am and is filed under Records. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.