Computers: An Electronic Assault on Privacy?

After living quietly for five months on the outskirts of Los Angeles with her two children, Rosa Delgado came home one day to a rude surprise. Her landlord had sued to have her evicted, contending that he needed her $390-a-month apartment for his sister. Delgado, 28, a nurse's assistant, at first refused to move. Eventually she settled out of court, accepting her landlord's offer of a little cash and a 30-day grace period in which to find a new home. But when she began apartment hunting, she encountered some unexpected resistance. One landlord objected to her children. Another did not want to take on a "welfare case" with a record of refusing to pay her rent. Finally, Delgado discovered the source of her trouble: her name had been added to an electronic registry of "bad tenant risks" available by subscription to any local property owner. As party to a tenant-landlord suit, Delgado had been automatically included in a computer blacklist.

In many states across the U.S., tenant lists have become a growth industry. "It seems to be an idea that is catching on," says Paul Jenney of Springfield, Mass., whose Landlord Reports Computer Service will, for $4, deliver a profile of any one of 100,000 Bay State tenants who have ever butted heads with their landlords. Denver-based RentCheck boasts a coast-to-coast network; its subscribers control 2.5 million rental units, some 10% of the % total U.S. rental housing supply.

Merchandising computer lists of bad-risk clients has spread to other fields. Chicago-based Docketsearch Network Corp. has compiled the names of 2.2 million Americans who have filed medical-malpractice, product-liability or personal-injury lawsuits. Doctors who subscribe to its $150-a-year Physician's Alert service can call a special toll-free number, give a prospective patient's name, and within 25 seconds find out if the individual has a penchant for filing lawsuits and ought to be handled with care. This summer Docketsearch plans to expand its listings to include records of bankruptcies, tax liens and workers' compensation claims. "We have the capability of becoming a one-stop national resource," says President Michael Eckstein. "It becomes a very powerful tool."

The computer-blacklist industry already has its giants. Such credit bureaus as TRW Information Services in Orange, Calif., and Equifax Inc. in Atlanta have long relied on huge banks of mainframe computers to provide consumer credit records for banks, department stores, finance companies and employers. Every working day, TRW's machines handle an average of 255,000 requests, culling information from a massive data base that contains detailed records of the bill-paying habits of 133 million people.