[2975] in WWW Security List Archive
Re: Can you say "fraud"?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dennis Boone)
Wed Sep 18 08:25:22 1996
To: www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
From: Dennis Boone <drb@gopher.cl.msu.edu>
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 96 17:40:09 -0500
Errors-To: owner-www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
> I would assume this is a scam. If the company is legitimate, then it would
> be like other credit bureau companies ... you would be able to review
> information for accuracy, but couldn't request your name be removed.
MSU subscribes to Lexis/Nexis. They are a large and legitimate online
database vendor headquartered in Dayton, OH. They used to be owned by
Mead, and are now owned by Reed-Elsevier. Their original (and still
largest) audience is lawyers, who utilize their case law, state and
federal statute data collection. Other things they carry include full
text of various newswires, magazines and newspapers. They have several
databases dedicated to finding people which are presumably used by the
credit lawyers; however they are not a credit bureau. If they want an
SSN to remove you, it's probably to make sure that they remove the
right record. For what its worth, removing yourself from this database
is probably a complete waste of time, as far as real privacy goes.
Dennis Boone
MSU CWIS Team
