32,000 Victims of New ID Theft Hack

First Choicepoint revealed that the personal data of 145,000 individuals had been compromised in late February. Now, LexisNexis has disclosed that the personal information of up to 32,000 customers may have been compromised.

The break-in occurred at LexisNexis-owned Seisint, a company that specializes in creating databases from information it gets from the U.S. government. Obtained in the hack were names, addresses, and social security and driver's license numbers.

LexisNexis, a subsidiary of publisher Reed Elsevier, stumbled upon the problem after receiving a billing complaint from a customer last week.

LexisNexis, like ChoicePoint, said it will offer to assist those affected by helping them in any way possible to prevent identity theft, as well as pay for any credit monitoring tools they may use.

In a bizarre twist, Seisint and ChoicePoint had actually been in several legal battles over the past several years. ChoicePoint had sued Seisint at one time, and Seisint founder Hank Asher once sued Choicepoint for $1.8 billion accusing its executives of trying to sour the buyout by Reed Elsevier.

Like in the ChoicePoint situation, law enforcement has asked Seisint to keep all public disclosures of the situation to a minimum so they can try to "catch up with these people," according to representatives of the company.