Periscope
18 NEWSWEEK.COM
PERSONAL FINANCEWhen LexisNexis doesn’t have—
or doesn’t use—enough information
about an individual when running
a search, that can result in multi-
ple people’s data ending up on one
person’s report, according to attor-
ney John Soumilas. The Philadel-
phia-based consumer lawyer has
represented plaintiffs on multiple
lawsuits against the company.
For example, Soumilas’ firm won
a lawsuit in 2014 representing David
Smith, a Michigan man who was ini-
tially denied a job after his background
check turned up a criminal record
belonging to a different David Smith.
According to the judge’s ruling, Lexis-
Nexis hadn’t required the employer to
provide a middle name.
Lawyers for LexisNexis contested
the verdict, arguing that it had no
prior notice that its procedures pre-
sented a problem, nor did it know
of a reasonable alternative matching
procedure that it failed to use, accord-
ing to a court filing. The jury awarded
Smith $375,000, but he eventually
received about $75,000 in damages,
because the trial court found the orig-
inal damages award was excessive. An
appeals decision agreed and found
that LexisNexis had not willfully vio-
lated its obligations.
“There’s no good reason not to use
a Social Security number when it’s
available, or a date of birth, or a middle
name,” Soumilas maintains.
In her experience, LexisNexis
includes information even if names
don’t match, according to Kelly, the
consumer attorney in Virginia.
Kelly says she recently reached
a settlement for a client whose car
insurance premiums skyrocketed
after LexisNexis placed accidents and
claims belonging to four other people
on her client’s report. The other peo-
ple’s names were spelled differently
from her client’s, and the birthdatesWhile this ease of sharing informa-
tion can streamline the approval pro-
cess, it can also exacerbate the impact
of erroneous information. Once a mis-
take is made, it can efficiently spread
from LexisNexis to its clients, includ-
ing other companies that collect and
sell consumer data. And this happens
largely hidden from the public’s view.HOW MISTAKES HAPPEN
For almost two decades, Donald Jaynes
says, he received phone calls and mail
for a man named Donald Whitehead.
(Whitehead could not be reached for
comment.) Companies were trying
to reach him, wanting payment of
bills. Jaynes says he first learned he
was being confused with someone
else when a credit check was done
on him while leasing a car in 1997.
He disputed the connection with all
three credit bureaus, and Experian
responded with a letter saying it had
corrected its records. Jaynes doesn’t
remember receiving letters from the
other bureaus.
But Jaynes says that’s when the
calls and mail started, leading him to
spend hundreds of hours following
up with the creditors that contacted
him and trying to determine the
source of their information. Jaynes
says he traced the issue to LexisNexis
and filed a dispute with the company.
He says the calls and mail for White-
head stopped after that, in 2016—but
only temporarily. After believing he
had finally fixed the problem, Jaynes
says he received another call for
Whitehead in August of this year.
Jaynes, who lives in Indiana and
worked as a CPA, says he often wor-
ried the confusion from his mixed
file would prevent him from finding
work or financing, despite his own
good credit. He later learned, from a
collections agent, that his Social Secu-
rity number differs from Whitehead’sby a single digit.
While Jaynes and Tolbert have
been mixed up with strangers, other
consumers have found their data
muddled with information from
family members.
Freelance writer and digital prod-
uct owner Farah Fard says she was
unable to access her bank account
online on multiple occasions because
the security questions didn’t pertain to
her, but rather to her twin sister. Fard
says she learned LexisNexis was her
bank’s information source.
“I am just really sick of companies
like this acting like it’s just an, ‘Oh
well, oops,’ when it has real time con-
sequences for those of us cleaning up
these glaring mistakes,” she says.
In a written statement, LexisNe-
xis’ Richman declined to comment
on Fard’s case or any other, citing pri-
vacy concerns.
Mixed files can occur when the
information provided to LexisNexis
is wrong—such as if an auto insurer
confuses two drivers when sharing its
information. But mix-ups can happen
even if the information provided to
LexisNexis is right.
For example, the insurer that cov-
ered both Thomas Tolberts provided
a document that showed its records
hadn’t confused the two.
So if the insurer’s information was
correct, what led to the mix-up?“LexisNexis holds
83 billion public
records on 282 million
unique identities—anaverage of about 290
records per identity.”OCTOBER 04, 2019