I found this is today's news feed: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/b...aac34c54&ex=1337313600&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss The article talks about market research and information gathering companies who sell lists of names and phone numbers to known thieves and con artists. Makes you think twice about filling out those "contest" and "sweepstakes" coupons. For the [slim] chance of winning a vacation, you, too, can hand over your personal information to con-artists. Talk about the land of opportunity (India and Eastern Europe, that is, where the call centers make the phone calls).
Have you ever checked out LexisNexis? There are data miners all over the place that sell everything and anything to the highest bidder. There really isn't a true expectation of privacy anymore in the U.S. today.
Even "industries" based on fraud and other shady practices depend on supporting industries. Those include "telemarketing", "marketing lists" (for solicitation, or just to make fraudulent CC charges, "banking" (the money has to be taken thru some existing payment channel, whether a bank or a CC payment processor), and possibly "debt collection" if the nature of the fraud involves "loans" extracting payments over time, when the victims realize they have been scammed and stop payments. The role of "markets" in the sale and distribution of stolen identities and CC numbers has been well documented. For a look at the support infrastructure needed to support even outright criminal schemes, see: http://www.faughnan.com/ccfraud.html
Heck, TU argued that it was unconstitutional for the FCRA to in any way, shape, or form, tether their ability to sell consumer information to anyone, for any purpose that they should see fit. Luckily, I think only one Supreme Court justice was stupid enough to see their way.
I've even seen the argument that, since information from credit reports was not obtained under a permissible purpose, FCRA did not apply to it, so there was no limit to what could be done with it, effectively turning FCRA on its head. If I remember right, that didn't fly. (Might have been the TU case, I am not sure.)
Who's information is it, anyway? It's interesting how the CRAs think and act like it's their information. After all, they collected it, so it must be their's. I think the CRAs should pay US (at least a percentage) whenever they sell our information to anyone that we didn't authorize. (I can dream, right?!)
You are lucky to get them to tell you they sold it at all, and there is a law requiring that. One of them doesn't even tell you what permissible purpose an inquiry was under, obscuring illegal inquiries and putting a barrier in front of consumers trying to contain illegal distribution of their credit information.
Ontrack: That arguement is in my Pulls & PRMs thread The caselaw is St. Paul Guardian Ins. Co. v. Johnson, 884 F.2d 881, 884-85 (5th Cir. 1989)
That was the one I was thinking of. "But Judge, I shouldn't have gotten a ticket because when I was speeding, I wasn't driving within the law, so it shouldn't apply to me! I was driving as a reckless maniac, not a careful driver." Really the same deep legal reasoning as a Chauhdry letter.
The scary thing is that the BBB contact for the company which got the Pulls & PRMS thread started, actually SAID something along the line of St. Pauls.
If you want to do something illegal, and not be caught doing it willfully, just be sure to get a legal opinion first. Doesn't have to be a good opinion, just plausible that you might possibly have believed it, or some misinterpretation of it. "Plausible deniability" might be enough to get you off punitive damages.
