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My brother, who worked for a federal agency, received the following
message from a sister agency, concerning the P-TRAK database, which
contains citizens' personal information. However the information about
P-TRAK may not be accurate. A rebuttal from the database manager,
LEXIS-NEXIS is therefore appended.
Original Rumor:
concerns about privacy issues. Your name, social security
number, current address, previous addresses, mother's maiden
name, birth date and other personal information are now available
to anyone with a credit card through a new Lexis database called
P-Trax.
Please read the message below and take appropriate action.
Your name, social security number, current address, previous
addresses, mother's maiden name, birth date and other personal
information are now available to anyone with a credit card
through a new Lexis database called P-Trax. As I am sure you are
aware, this information could be used to commit credit card fraud
or otherwise allow someone else to use your identity.
You can have your name and information removed from this list by
making a telephone request. Call (800)543-6862, select option 4
and then option 9 ("P-Trax") or 3 ("all other questions") and
tell the representative answering that you wish to remove your
name from the P-trax database. You may also send a fax to (513)
865-1930, or physical mail to LEXIS-NEXIS / P.O. Box 933 /
Dayton, Ohio 45401-0933. Sending physical mail to confirm your
name has been removed is always a good idea.
As word of the existence of this database has spread on the net,
Lexis-Nexis has been inundated with calls, and has set up a
special set of operators to handle the volume. In addition,
Andrew Bleh (rhymes with "Play") is a manager responsible for
this product, and is the person to whom complaints about the
service could be directed. He can be reached at the above 800
number. Ask for extension 3385. According to Lexis, the manager
responsible is Bill Fister at extension 1364.
I called this morning and had my name removed. The
representative will need your name and social security number to
remove you from the list. I suggest that we inundate these
people with requests to remove our info from the list and forward
this e-mail to everyone we know.
Statement on the P-TRAK file from LEXIS-NEXIS:
"LEXIS-NEXIS markets the P-TRAK file to the legal community for use by
general legal practitioners, litigators and public attorneys, as well as
law enforcement agencies and police departments. These professionals use
the P-TRAK file to assist in locating litigants, witnesses, shareholders,
debtors, heirs and beneficiaries.
It's important to note that LEXIS-NEXIS is a business-to-business
service and is not a consumer online service. The LEXIS-NEXIS service is
targeted to and used by attorneys, businesses and government agencies.
LEXIS-NEXIS is aware of the sensitivities regarding the potential misuse
of information. While business competitors of LEXIS-NEXIS have for some
time made Social Security numbers available to users of their services,
and continue to do so, LEXIS-NEXIS discontinued the display of Social
Security numbers in the P-TRAK file as of June 11, 1996, eleven days after
the product was introduced.
There has been much erroneous information distributed on the Internet
regarding the data displayed in the P-TRAK file. The displayed record may,
but not always, include the name of the individual, the individual's
maiden and assumed names, current as well as up to two previous addresses,
month and year of birth and telephone number. That is the only information
displayed in the P-TRAK file.
Contrary to some messages that have been posted to some Internet
discussion and news groups, the P-TRAK file does not contain any credit
histories, bank account information or other personal financial data, or
medical histories.
The information displayed in the P-TRAK file is an aggregation readily
available from public information sources such as telephone directories
(in print and CD-ROM format) and public records maintained by government
agencies.
Through its actions, LEXIS-NEXIS is balancing the privacy concerns of the
public with the legitimate needs of legal, business and government
professionals for access to accurate sources of publicly available
information. By discontinuing the display of Social Security numbers in
P-TRAK and only providing information that is already available to the
public from other sources, LEXIS-NEXIS believes it has responsibly met the
expressed concerns of the public.
Please click here if you would like to request that your name be
removed from P-TRAK.
<<http://www.lexis-nexis.com/lncc/p-trak/index.html>
7 responses total.
Thanks for posting this! I just heard the shortened version of this on CNN. I will now link this to the cyberpunk conf as item 50. j cyber at the next Ok: prompt.
I recall reading in "RISKS" that Lexis-Nexis will no longer accept requests to remove your name from P-TRAK via the 800 phone number in the initial article, though they do accept requests by other means. Too many people were calling the 800 number to have their names removed, which became too costly.
It occurs to me that there should be some way to *charge* commercial users of your personal informatio, and otherwise only permit the use by others if you agree. This is true of the phone book - they pay you the cost of an unlisted number to list your number.
So, if there were a $5 charge for you to not be listed in P-TRAX, that would actually mean they were paying you $5 to be listed?
Re 4, heh :-). Companies do often pay people for personal information. That's what a lot of sweepstakes forms and mail-in rebates are for. Many buyers then make some of that money back by reselling it to others.
When I saw this rumour originally, I did some digging, and
posted this elsewhere:==
(somone) had written:
...
> called P-Trax. As I am sure you are aware, this information
Actually, it's called P-TRAK. See
http://www.lexis-nexis.com/lncc/products/media/issue396.html
...
> telephone request. Call (800)543-6862, select option 4 and
The number does indeed belong to LEXIS-NEXIS.
...
> LEXIS-NEXIS
> P.O. Box 933
> Dayton, Ohio 45401-0933.
This address does seem to belong to them. They also receive
employment resumes, requests for updates to the code of federal
regulations (CFR), requests for Lexis-Nexis cd-rom products,
etc., here. I suspect sending mail here won't get a real fast
response.
While I can't speak for the efficiacy of the process, the data seems real
enough.
Lexis is hardly a pioneer in the field. There are any number of ways to
get that sort of information.
For instance, check out:
http://www.lookupusa.com/lookupusa/ada/ada.htm
Ever wondered how to find someone's house? Free!
http://www.winternet.com/thecat/assets1.html
Only $69!
http://www.familytreemaker.com/00000519.html
Was your family religious?
http://www2.tia.net/giin/index.html
Full service!
http://www.info-sh.com/#ALIASES
A TLA is just another name...
http://home.earthlink.net/%7Erottner/service.htm
Skip trace? Soundex report? It's all here.
http://members.gnn.com/khuisman/locating.htm
Gosh, you guessed it. They'll find people too.
http://www.bizpro.com/murphy/murphyx2.html
I smell a rat.
(Hmm. Do you suppose the lexis campaign was started by one of these
for-profit people?) ((dark & scary theory: *someone* wants a list of
people who care so much about liberty and privacy they'll endure muzak
by phone.))
And of course, there's the old standbys, see:
http://www.tiberias.com/get.html
Of course, they're only *supposed* to sell this
information to legitimate persons. Yup yup,
and I know of some nice swamp land in Florida.
Do you have *any* idea how many small-time crooks
and sleazy auto sales people there are in the United States?
In many cases, these organizations are just packaging up services
anyone can use. For instance, in most states, you can call up the
motor vehicle department, supply a license plate #, & for a small fee find
out who owns it and where they live. County legal records such as
property & marriage information are available to anyone who walks in.
(As they *should* be -- there *are* countries where people simply
disappear.) The post office will supply amazing amounts of information
to mass advertisers. &Etc. &Etc.
In summary,
"you can run, but you can't hide"
Right. There's all kinds of hysteria about this P-Trak thing, which is only one small manifestation of all the databases out there. I'm amused to see the intense hysteria over DNA testing, and none at all over the new fingerprint ID technology. Not so very long ago, a set of fingerprints was about as useful as a photograph. If you had a fingerprint from a crime scene, and had a suspect in mind, you could manually compare the patterns and either convict or exclude the person. There was no good, systematic way of comparing a given found fingerprint with the tens of millions of fingerprints on file. But now, it is easy. This has been a big boon for burglary investigations. In California, where this system was originally set up, police were finding culprits they had never thought of, from the fingerprints alone. So in some ways, it's a very good thing. DNA coding ordinarily requires that you've left some blood or semen at a crime scene -- not something most people normally do. But everybody leaves fingerprints on everything they touch, and a large percentage of people have fingerprints on file with the FBI (I myself was fingerprinted as part of the process of being licensed to practice law). Every time you pick up a pay phone handset or turn a door handle with your bare hand, you're leaving behind positive identification. The implications for privacy are much more severe, I think, than the possibility that Land's End might include you among half a million households with certain income and interests, and mail you a catalog.
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- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss