Bob Sullivan reports:
The Equifax credit reporting agency, with the aid of thousands of human resource departments around the country, has assembled what may be the most powerful and thorough private database of Americans’ personal information ever created, containing 190 million employment and salary records covering more than one-third of U.S. adults.
Some of the information in the little-known database, created through an Equifax-owned company called The Work Number, is sold to debt collectors, financial service companies and other entities.
“It’s the biggest privacy breach in our time, and it’s legal and no one knows it’s going on,” said Robert Mather, who runs a small employment background company named Pre-Employ.com. “It’s like a secret CIA.”
Read more on Red Tape Chronicles.
via Adam Shostack