Data exposure: Counties across the U.S. posting sensitive info online

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April 12, 2006 (Computerworld) -- Broward County, Fla., Maricopa County, Ariz., Fort Bend County, Texas. Three counties separated by hundreds of miles with something in common: They’re among potentially hundreds of counties in several states that in recent years have made Social Security numbers, driver's license information, bank account numbers and a variety of other personally sensitive data belonging to residents available to anyone in the world with Internet access.

The exposure follows the failure to redact sensitive information from land records and other public documents posted on the Internet and makes county Web sites a veritable treasure trove of information for identity thieves and other criminals, according to a number of privacy advocates.

“These sites are just spoon-feeding criminals the information they need,” said B.J. Ostergren, a privacy advocate based in Richmond, Va. “But no one appears to be seeing it and nobody’s changing the laws,” she said.

Among the pieces of personally identifiable information from county Web sites made available to Computerworld by Ostergren and other privacy advocates were: Rep. Tom Delay’s Social Security number on a tax lien document; the Social Security numbers for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and his wife on a quit claim deed from 1999; driver’s license numbers, addresses, vehicle registration information, height and race of individuals arrested for traffic violations; names and dates of birth of minors from final divorce decrees and family court documents; and even complete copies of death certificates with Social Security numbers, dates of birth and cause of death. (The Social Security numbers for Bush and his wife have been redacted and are no longer available online.)

“All of this information is available to anyone sitting in a cafe in Nigeria or anywhere else in the world,” said David Bloys, a retired private investigator who publishes a newsletter called "News for Public Officials" in Shallowater, Texas. “It’s a real security threat.”

Those concerns follow news that personally identifiable information belonging to an unknown number of current and former residents of Florida are available online because sensitive information has not been removed from public records posted on county Web sites in that state.

It’s unclear exactly how many of the 3,600 county governments in the United States do the same thing, said Mark Monacelli, president of the Property Records Industry Association, a Durham, N.C.-based industry group set up to facilitate the recording of, and access to, public property information.

But it’s safe to assume that many of them are posting sensitive data online, based on the trend by local governments to provide Web-based access to public records, said Darity Wesley, CEO of Privacy Solutions, a privacy consultancy for the real estate industry based in San Diego. “I think a lot of [county] recorders have been putting [images of] public land records on the Internet without any concern about who has access to it,” Wesley said.

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• 'Human error' exposes patients' Social Security numbers in N.C.
• Arrests made in debit card fraud case
• N.H. IT worker disputes state government security breach
• Security snafu at Boston Globe exposes subscriber data
• Debit card fraud outbreak raises questions about data breach
• Lessons learned from corporate security breaches
• Data exposure: Using software to redact personal data from public documents
• Creative Bungling: IT Can't Stop All Data Breaches
• FTC imposes $10M fine against ChoicePoint for data breach
• Ohio recalls voter registration CDs; Social Security numbers included
• Bank tape lost with data on 90,000 customers
• Laptop theft at Fidelity exposes data on 196,000 HP workers
• Data exposure: Counties across the U.S. posting sensitive info online
• Offshore outsourcing cited in Florida data leak
• FBI: No credit card data breach in N.H. state server case
• Ohio University reports two separate security breaches
• Honeywell blames ex-employee in data leak
• Hacker hits Georgia state database via hole in security software
• Aetna says laptop stolen with data on 38,000 members
• Update: Thief nabs backup data on 365,000 patients
• Confidential patient data sent to wrong company -- for 15 months
• Update: Fla. residents' data exposure a statewide issue
• Analysis: Data breach notification law unlikely this year
• Idaho utility hard drives -- and data -- turn up on eBay
• Registrar's database said to have exposed data

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• IT workers hit hardest by offshore outsourcing, survey finds
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In Security Stripping away the trappings of applications, systems and networks, information is the core asset of most organizations. Our columnist describes how asserting the importance of information governance is crucial to making that asset tangible, addressable and protected. Click here to read the latest column by Jon Espenschied