U.S. Gov't posted 150,000 Social Security numbers

[Hum]

WASHINGTON - The government posted the Social Security numbers of up to 150,000 recipients of Agriculture Department grants on the Web since 1996 before taking them down last week. Free credit monitoring is being offered to those affected.

The security breach was only noticed last week and promptly closed, the Agriculture Department and Census Bureau announced Friday.

But a study has begun to see if 32 other federal agencies may have followed the same practice. The Agriculture data were removed from the Web on April 13 and the data from 32 other agencies were taken down April 17 as a precaution, Agriculture spokeswoman Terri Teuber said.

"There is no evidence that this information has been misused," Teuber added. "However, due to the potential that this information was downloaded prior to being removed, USDA will provide the additional monitoring service."

When the breach was reported to Agriculture on April 13, there were Social Security numbers for 47,000 recipients of grants from the department's Farm Services Agency and from USDA Rural Development on a public Web site maintained by the Census Bureau.

The department said the Social Security numbers of 105,000 to 150,000 individuals had been entered into federal databases open to the public since 1981. But the data has only been posted on the Internet by the Census Bureau since 1996.

source

[goji]

What reason could Washington have for even considering the publication of such data? :blink:

[Tokar]

Isnt credit monitoring already free?

[iconoclast]

What reason could Washington have for even considering the publication of such data? :blink:

It was an oversight. I read either this, or a similar article a while back. All they did was scan in paper documents (that iirc were filled out before the internet was widespread). They failed to realize/remember that SSN's were on these documents, so it was possible for people to look up the specific grant and finds the SSN's that way.

[Lare2]

Isnt credit monitoring already free?

Only once a year from the three principal companies AFAIK. You can request it here :yes:

[tkyoshi]

Only once a year from the three principal companies AFAIK. You can request it here :yes:

True, credit monitoring takes it one step further. Basically if anyone tries to apply for credit under your name at any time, they will try to contact you every single time from now on so it's on ongoing monitoring process.