BREAKING: Social Security Numbers Sitting Unsecured on County Clerk’s Site
Yikes! Anyone, who, like me, has done business with the county (like bought a house or registered a business for example), should be really nervous right about now:
Hundreds of social security numbers found on County Clerk’s websiteHundreds of social security numbers were found on the County Clerk’s website there for anyone to see.
News 10NBC found the social security numbers on documents filed in the Clerk’s office from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court. It appears as if the problem exists in the years 2000 through 2003.
This is huge, and bad. Talk about risk of identity theft. Oh, and this would be funny if it weren’t so serious:
The clerk, Cheryl Dinolfo, has taken steps to remove the social security numbers, but the state kept her hands tied for years.
So in other words, she can be all big and brave and stand up to the state while she’s grandstanding against Spitzer’s licensing plan (which was DOA anyway), but when it comes to securing our social security numbers? In that case, the state has “kept her hands tied”.
It seems to me like Dinolfo’s more focused in protecting her political career than us Monroe Countians.
UPDATE: Dinolfo has still not taken the site down. Height of irresponsibility. Oh, and there’s no state requirement to post this data online, anyway. Wayne County, for example, doesn’t post this information. So she’s either ill-informed on the laws, or she’s lying.
UPDATE 2: Tom Hasman, Dem challenger for the Clerk’s office (and information security expert, incidentally), has publicly asked Dinolfo to take the data down:
Hasman is expected to call on his oppononent, Republican incumbent Cheryl Dinolfo, to remove the public documents from the Web site.
I don’t know why it takes someone else to explain to her that that should’ve been the very first thing she should’ve done. Although, taking it down would be an admission of her guilt in this, so given the reluctance of GOP leadership to admit mistakes, from Bush on down, she might just be showing her true colors.
MPNNow.com and News 10 are reporting it’s THOUSANDS of documents, not hundreds. And many of them date back to when Maggie was the Clerk.
Callous disregard must run in the “family”.
Fire Dinolfo Maggie. Do it NOW.
Geez, did anyone see Cheryl on TV last night? What a disgrace. I love that she accuses Hasman of playing politics, but who, exactly, is playing politics here?
She has not accepted responsibility for what is, in fact, a huge screw up.
Cheryl keeps saying that she implemented policy to prevent this sort of thing from happening. Am I losing my mind, or are there now, currently, Social Security numbers of Monroe County residents available online?
Cheryl notes that they have redacting software. Well, then why are there Social Security numbers of Monroe County residents available online?
Cheryl argues that the documents are from before her tenure as clerk. Seriously? Is she now blaming Maggie for this? Anyway, Maggie didn’t post the documents, Cheryl did.
Whine, deflect blame, and do nothing about a very serious situation. Incompetence, pure and simple. Residents of Monroe County deserve way better.
[...] - Social Security Numbers are on the very Public Monroe County Clerk’s website. Well, it really isn’t all that [...]
[...] in the day the news broke about 100,000 social security numbers sitting, unsecured, on the County Clerk’s…, I sat down with Tom Hasman, Democratic challenger for the County Clerk candidate Tom Hasman. [...]