[65779] in Cypherpunks
Re: SSN database scam?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jim Byrd)
Wed Sep 18 10:41:17 1996
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1996 10:12:42 -0400
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
From: Jim Byrd <byrd@ACM.ORG>
Cc: gary@systemics.com
At 01:22 PM 9/18/96 +0200, Gary Howland <gary@systemics.com> forwarded:
>Forwarded from www-security mailing list.
[snip]
>Can anybody comment on the item forwarded below my sig file? It claims
>there's a database w/ people's credit card no's etc on it and you have to
>give your name and social security number to get off of it. This strikes
>me as being a scam to get your ssn, but this went around at work and
>people are actually calling and giving it out. I know ssn's aren't really
>as secure as they're supposed to be, but still...
I happen to work for Lexis-Nexis, but I don't speak for the company. Yes,
P-Trak is real, it was recently made available to our customers.
It is NOT a scam to get SSNs. Lexis-Nexis is a large and reputable company,
best-known for its huge legal database system, Lexis. The Nexis side has
news reports from a large variety of sources.
P-Trak originally made SSNs available, but Lexis-Nexis removed this feature
in response to protests.
