After a flurry of reports of wayward credit card data earlier this year, things have been relatively quiet over the past few months. Until now… ChoicePoint has reportedly sent out an additional 17,000 notices to consumers warning that their sensitive financial information may have been compromised. Thieves apparently gained access to ChoicePoint’s database by posing as small business owners. This latest round of notifications brings to 162,000 the number of warnings that ChoicePoint has had to send out this year. While this is just a drop in the bucket compared to the 40 million records that were exposed by CardSystems Solutions, Inc. earlier this year and the 19 billion records that ChoicePoint maintains in its database, it’s still disconcerting. And it’s a huge deal to the 750 people that are confirmed to have fallen victim to identify theft as a result of these security breaches. As always, your best protection is to keep an eye out for questionable information on your credit reports.

[Source: ABC News]