Source: Presstelegram
Hundreds of thousands of Californians’ Social Security numbers were vulnerable to abuse by identity thieves because they were made publicly available through the Secretary of State’s Web site over the last three years, officials said Thursday. The personal data was removed from Secretary of State Debra Bowen’s Web site earlier this week after a state legislator notified her office of the possible vulnerability.

The data was available in Uniform Commercial Code filings - documents lenders file relating to collateral securing a loan. About one-third of the 2 million UCC documents on file had the borrower’s name, address, Social Security number and signature. The other two-thirds of the documents were for loans to businesses, rather than individuals.

“We should take every step we can to make sure government is not fostering this (identity theft) behavior,” said Assemblyman Dave Jones, D-Sacramento, who alerted Bowen’s office to the breach. “Public records should be a window into the operation of the people’s government. But they should not be the basis for an identity theft starter kit.” He said the records were available for sale over the Internet for $6 each from 2004 until earlier this week, “making this potentially the longest running government Internet breach in California’s history.” [more]