Page 8 - December PPIAC Newsletter FINAL w Links

Access To DMV Records In Question

Members,

You may have read an email I sent to the membership regarding a recent
article involving a class action lawsuit against Lexis Nexis.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20201108/14160345671/data-broker-
hook-5-million-after-abusing-access-to-north-carolina-dmv-data.shtml

To recap, this lawsuit was first filed in early 2016 and Lexis Nexis agreed to a
settlement of $5 million in November 2020. The article states that Lexis Nexis
sold data to clients in a way that violated DPPA laws. Also note that news
outlet Vice was involved in reporting some of this news, and once again private
investigators are being mentioned in the article. PPIAC's legislative committee
has been closely following Vice's coverage of what they are calling illegal PI
practices.

This recent class action settlement is alarming and is a stark indicator of how
relentless ‘privacy advocates’ are in calling out DPPA violations. At this time,
PPIAC's legislative committee asks that everyone, PPIAC member or not, and
whether PI, attorney or any client to ensure that any data request from DMV
or professional databases unquestionably falls within the permissible
purposes. Besides the lawsuit in North Carolina, we have heard from
colleagues in multiple states having their DMV access restricted or flatly
denied for numerous reasons. One state has denied access due to the types of
services PIs advertise on their websites not falling under DPPA