Ohio Screws its Residents
Its bad enough they make you fill out all that tax paperwork to prove that you paid your taxes. Its much worse for the State to post your personal information, including your SSN on the internet in a public directory for thieves to steal your identity!
From the USA Today Here:
The disclosure of Ohio residents’Social Security numbers on the state government’s website highlights what many privacy experts – and criminals – already know: Such information is readily available to anyone with an Internet connection.
It is common for the websites of the USA’s secretaries of state to contain personal information, including Social Security numbers (SSNs) and home addresses, in business statements. Besides Ohio, the data is available in New York, Florida and at least seven other states, say privacy experts who provided USA TODAY with links to public websites.
Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell is under fire after The Cincinnati Enquirer reported this week that an unknown number of business filings posted on the state’s website include the SSNs of filers.
Most of the numbers appear on a lien form used from July 2001 to May 2002. As many as 150,000 of those forms are processed each year. SSNs are optional, says Sherri Dembinski, chief of staff for Blackwell.
She said Thursday that state law requires the filings be processed within 48 hours and made available to individuals and lending institutions by the third day. “We did not violate any law,” she said.
Still, Blackwell spokesman James Lee said the office is considering options including removing the SSNs.
Similar information can be obtained through the websites of other states by viewing publicly available business filings. Such data could open the door for ID thieves to the credit histories and medical records of individuals, security experts say.
The state may not have violated any laws, but they certainly exposed themselves to liability for the theft of personal information. Personal Injury lawyers will be all over this soon.
