Data breach victims get $19.05 payout

An administrator working for the US Federal Trade Commission has been given the task of mailing 14,023 cheques for US$18.17 ($19.05) to victims of the massive 2005 ChoicePoint data breach.

The data aggregation company (acquired by publishing giant Reed Elsevier in 2008) paid a $10 million settlement to the FTC in 2006 after it admitted that the financial records of 163,000 consumers in its database had been compromised due to its lax security.

It was also ordered to pay $5 million in "consumer redress".

The US$18.17 consumers will receive was for "time they may have spent monitoring their credit or taking other steps in response" to Choice Point violating the 2006 settlement, according to the FTC.

The reimbursement stems from a second settlement the company made with the FTC in 2009 as a result of it breaching the conditions of its first.

The FTC claimed that the data breach resulted in at least 800 cases of identity theft.