Choicepoint, March 24/25
- The Federal Reserve has joined the FDIC in ordering banks to notify customers of breaches.
- Forbes reports that Choicepoint director Thomas Coughlin has resigned his day job at Wal-Mart:
“A senior board member of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. resigned Friday following an internal investigation related to personal reimbursements, billing and company gift cards.” - [Choicepoint CEO] Derek Smith has apparently received threats via fax, according to TV station WXIA Atlanta. Here’s a cheat sheet for you:
- Denying his job application because of a Texas criminal record: Entertaining.
- Sending him Nigerian spam from a Kinko’s in LA: Self-referentially ironically cool.
- Sending threats: Not cool.
- Scott Berinato has a column at CSO Magazine calling this the Waterloo of information security. (Is there a permalink to that column?)
- The Christian Science Monitor has an editorial entitled “Locking Out Identity Thieves.” The subtitle is “Why are data collectors blocking efforts to require notice of a security breach?”
One problem that critics point out: Consumers might also limit their own ability to obtain credit. But that’s a small price to pay for privacy and a more secure online identity.
The best way to see all my Choicepoint posts is probably the category archive for Choicepoint [link to http://www.emergentchaos.com/archives/cat_choicepoint.html no longer works]. [Update: added Berinato column, 2: Identified Smith]
Who is Derek Smith?
The Alarmed link should be permalinked when the next column comes out. It should be something like: http://csoonline.com/alarmed/03142005.html
Threats?
“You greedy rich white [expletive],??? the hand-written message reads.
About three hours later, another fax arrived. The note was typed and sent from a known number in the 404 area code.
“I hope all your children die before you,??? the message read.
Now, that ain’t pleasant, but where’s the threat?