ChoicePoint files found riddled with errors

Elizabeth Rosen has also spotted numerous mistakes in her seven-page ChoicePoint report.  Rosen, a nurse from Los Angeles, Calif., was the first consumer to complain to MSNBC.com after receiving a letter from ChoicePoint in February indicating her personal information had been stolen. 

Rosen has since received a copy of one of her ChoicePoint reports, a "personal public records search," -- she's still awaiting others -- and already, she's spotted a series of mistakes.

"There are problems on five of the seven pages," she said.

The most serious involve two post office boxes she has owned, one in Florida and one in Texas.  She only held the boxes for a short while, but Rosen believes she's now been connected to every other firm that has rented those boxes. In Miami Beach, she is listed as the owner of a firm named Adopt-A-Classroom. In Texas, she's been tied to a nail salon, a deli, and a firm named Phoenix Investigations, among 44 other businesses. She is also listed as an officer of a firm named "Reimbursement Specialists Of Central Texas, LLC."

No way to fix errors
But what really bothers Rosen is what happened next.

"I asked the guy at ChoicePoint how I can get these errors fixed," she said. "And he said they can't."

Rosen was told she had to talk with each furnisher of the information individually -- to the private firm where she rented the P.O. box, for example -- and convince each one to update their information and then send it back to ChoicePoint. Rosen figures there might be 100 different sources of information in her report, so fixing the errors would be just about impossible.

"I told them, 'I don't want to be spending 40 hours a week correcting your errors,’" she said. 

The ChoicePoint data leak has sparked calls for congressional investigations and new legislation. One bill, proposed by Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, would place companies like ChoicePoint in the same category as credit reporting agencies, which are governed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act and its subsequent revisions. That law establishes detailed -- albeit imperfect -- procedures for correcting errors in personal information.

That's a start, Pierce said. But fundamentally, she thinks lawmakers and corporations need to give more consideration to the compilation and use of such reports in the first place.

"Why are they entitled to have this information? How useful is it, if it's not accurate?" Pierce said. 

Meanwhile, Smith said compliance with such an accuracy requirement may be much easier said than done. Companies like ChoicePoint, which has gobbled up dozens of smaller database firms in recent years, often have hundreds of different databases. The data is often in very different formats, and not linked in any way. Simply answering the question "What's in my file?" may be impossible.

"There's no business reason for them to do it," Smith said. "Still, it would be nice if you could pay them ... and just ask, what do you know about me?"

Currently, consumers can order various fee-based reports at ChoiceTrust.com, ChoicePoint's consumer Web site. A list of consumer products is available at ChoicePoint's Web site.

Bob Sullivan is author of Your Evil Twin:  Behind the Identity Theft Epidemic.

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