Social Security Numbers Posted On Fla. County Government Websites
The use of an automated computer program has allowed an unknown number of Social Security numbers to be posted online in Pasco County, Fla., ABC Tampa reports:
REPORTER: Jamison, we know that an ID thief can ruin your financial life with your social security number. Someone could open bank accounts, or even get a loan in your name. What you may not know is your social security number could already be out there, posted on government websites.
REPORTER: It does not matter that Penny Wilson shreds her documents or that she’s careful about giving out personal information, because her Social Security number was already online—and she had no idea.
PENNY WILSON: I could not believe it. I shred everything. Right there on the computer is my Social Security number for anybody to see.
REPORTER: Penny found it up when she looked herself up on the Pasco County Property Appraisers website. She just typed in her own name in a records search and there it was, on a mortgage deed for anyone who wanted to find it.
WILSON: That is my information. That is—that is tied to my credit. Everything in my life, you know.
REPORTER: We looked up other homes in Penny’s neighborhood on the Pasco Clerk’s and Property Appraisers sites, and soon enough we had the Social Security numbers of 50 of her neighbors.
WILSON: I think they have no clue. It takes literally five minutes to find it.
PAULA O’ NEIL: It is possible that things could have been missed.
REPORTER: Pasco Couty Clerk Paula O’Neil’s office is responsible for posting public records online and removing the Social Security numbers. She says they’re required to post more than 14 million documents. It’s not impossible for them to check all of the documents one-by-one, so Florida law allows them to use an automated computer program. So the automated computer program goes through the millions of documents and blacks out the information, but sometimes it messes up and it misses Social Security numbers.
O’NEIL: If it is handwritten, it is hard to find. It could have been the spacing. A lot of the images are not clear.
REPORTER: The Property Appraisers Office says some of the documents were never run through the automated program. They plan to change this over the next six weeks after our investigation. The good news is it’s easy to look yourself up and request your number be removed. If the program is making mistakes, they want to hear about it.
O’NEIL: We would love to know about those cases. We’d love to redact that information.
REPORTER: We provided all the ones that we found, so they can be removed. Penny Wilson is glad her information is safe but she wants everyone to know they could be exposed to identity theft, too.
WILSON: If anything happens then you are going to be the one that is going to be out there doing all of the leg-work trying to re-establish your credit and everything. Nobody will fix it for you.
REPORTER: We looked at other county websites and did not find Social Security numbers online but Pasco County did provide cases showing the problem is happening in Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Hernando counties.