The Choicepoint data collecting agency has been put to task by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for revealing the private information of about thirteen thousand seven hundred fifty people. Ergo, the data brokerage has now offered to pay a total of two hundred seventy thousand dollars in compensation. This payment will help settle the charges and should amount to twenty dollars per exposed individual. At any rate, the security hole resulted after someone at Choicepoint accidentally turned off its database monitoring system; from there, a team of anonymous hackers busted into the virtual facility and rifled through social security numbers and other credentials via illegal searches.

Choicepoint's blunder came at an inopportune time; the organization was already under probation for another security lapse back in 2005 that resulted in at least eight hundred cases of identity theft. For that separate incident, Choicepoint had to pay fifteen million dollars before pledging to employ security measures to guarantee that consumer reports were only sent to genuine businesses for legal purposes. They also consented to regular independent assessments from that point on till 2026.  

All the same, despite the probation and the close monitoring of the FTC, a Choicepoint staffer managed to inadvertently dig the company into a deeper hole by mistakenly switching off a special monitoring system created to discern between authorized and unauthorized access to accounts. Then again, compared to the troubles that the firm has already suffered from, the fine that it's mandated to pay for its most recent blunder seems more like a drop in the bucket than anything else.

According to the FTC, during the period that the system was deactivated, hackers made quick work of the exposed credentials by looking up the data of over thirteen thousand or so clients stored in the Choicepoint data warehouses. Meanwhile, Choicepoint blamed another person for the infiltration, who is incidentally a former government client that was unable to shield an account ID and password used to browse through the catalog. On the other hand, the company's statement on the matter failed to explain why their monitoring system was inoperative for over four months. Nevertheless, Choicepoint insisted that they remained obedient to their 2006 agreement with the FTC.