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In mid-September (1996) there was a flurry of angry email messages flying around the Internet, discussing the news that personal information about you could be purchased from the company by just about anyone with a credit card. Many were outraged at the loss of their privacy, and Lexis-Nexis was flooded with requests from netizens demanding removal of their personal data from the database. P-Trak, the company´s personal information database product, was introduced last June by Lexis-Nexis. This 300 million name database of public information culled from credit bureau records contains each person´s name, maiden/alias name, current and two most recent previous addresses, month and year of birth, and phone number. When the product first came out, it included Social Security numbers as well, but that feature was pulled less than two weeks after the product´s initial release. However, if you have a Social Security number, you can still search the database (for a fee, of course) for related data. Compared to many other databases, such as those containing credit or medical histories, P-Trak is relatively tame. Nonetheless, the recent spotlight on Lexis-Nexis made it clear that much personal information is unknowingly gathered and used. Several journalists reported checking personal information in P-Trak, and most found erroneous information. This raises another issue: what inaccurate personal information is floating around in cyberspace and what effect might that have?.