"Thieves downloaded the consumers' credit files between April 2001 and February." http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2002/05/16/ford-credit.htm "'I've never seen anything of this size,' a spokesman for Experian, Donald Girard, said." http://www.itsecure.com.au/news/story.htm?StoryID=174 Testimony and statement of Legislative Counsel, Electronic Privacy Information Center, U.S. House Subcommittee hearing: "Earlier this year, Experian, one of the principal credit reporting agencies, experienced an unprecedented breach of security involving individuals' personal information." http://www.epic.org/privacy/ssn/ssntestimony9.19.02.html
From the article: The people contacted also were advised to obtain credit reports from the three primary credit reporting agencies VERY interesting ... 13,000 persons contacted and 'advised' to order their credit reports from "the three primary credit reporting agencies". And that's because one of the CRA's contacted Ford to "tell" them about some inquiries. Now, that's 13,000 people. If each person heeded the advice and obtained a credit report and/or credit manager services (i.e, CreditExpert), here's the net result (approximate figures): Reports Only: TU: $104,000 EXP: $194,000 EQU: $ 117,000 Reports WITH scores: TU: $156,000 EXP: $194,000 (same - couldn't find 'report only') EQU: $168,000 Credit Manager services: TU: N/A EXP: $1,040,000 EQU: $ 909,000 SO .... On the LOW end, it's $415,000 worth of revenue for the CRA's. On the high end, it's over $2,100,000. TWO MILLION BUCKS! Kinda makes you wonder if the CRA's aren't fabricating these types of stories (or actually adding inquiries to credit reports) JUST TO GENERATE REVENUE FOR THEMSELVES !!
John, I agree with your idea. It does seem, well...suspicious. By the way, I don't see the Packers being the Super Bowl champs this year...my money is on the Silver and Black. Dani
Those people were all entitled to free reports, shame on them! LizardKing had previously posted a news story about someone breaching the security of a municipal payroll or personnel system. The employees, including the mayor, were all told to obtain copies of their reports as well. No one told them or offered them free ones either :-( Sassy
Yep, suspected Fraud is a reason for a free report. Do we know for sure that Exp was charging???? BTW - $2 mill. is peanuts for these people.
Regardless, I'm sure that a large percentage of the people weren't saavy enough and ended up paying for reports, or were sucked into trying/buying credit monitoring services. If even ONE person had to spend $$ for any 'wag the dog' scandal, that's one person too many. And whether or not you think 2 million bucks is peanuts or not, we're just talking about ONE incident here. Throw one of these bones around a few times, increase the number of people violated/notificed, and you're potentially into the tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars towards gross revenue. And, as an example, Equifax had net tangible assets of a NEGATIVE 271 million dollars at quarter ending 30-JUN-2002. Still think 2 million bucks is peanuts?
I don't know when a million of anything got to be peanuts. But, there are 3 seperate instances of this having happened just from this board alone. 2 million peanuts x 3 million peanuts = 6 million peanuts! That's a peanut MOUNTAIN! More important than the peanut counting is that the CRA's KNOW that those people under the LAW are entitled to free reports. They are charged with maintaining release via permissable purpose ONLY and the confidentiality of the records (grade F on both accounts). They have an obligation to those consumers, starting with telling them they are entitled to free reports. Sassy
