http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/a ... nline.html

 

 

 

Summary: Government is making it easier for identity thieves and other fraudulent acts to occur by posting highly sensitive information in a public atmosphere. I.E.: social security numbers, credit card numbers, etc. Some of these parties have laws that allow a person to have it taken down upon request, while many do not.

 

 

 

The implications are clearly far and wide, but the real question posed here is....what does one do about such a thing?

Might aswell hand identity thefts your details yourself while asking them not to use them.

Naive, idiotic government officials. Russian ID thieves and mobsters are probably laughing their butts off while going to a US government site & finding files of some people that actually even contain SSN's and credit card numbers.

 

 

 

The article says thousands of person's files' include that data. It's beyond me why they'd make it public.

 

 

 

Plenty of states also have open prisoner records. Well, not that I have even a drop of sympathy for people like pedophiles, but I can imagine what happens to them after a higher ranking prisoner asks someone on the outside to check why someone "really" is in jail...

To be honest BlueLancer, the identity thieves themselves are not what worries me.... it is the people managing the site itself that gives me a headache. The thing is, the IT people that are in charge of these databases are clearly imbeciles, if not criminally liable for allowing it to occur. If we could just get more seasoned veterans in behind these things then in most likelihood it would not happen in the first place or would be occurring on a less frequent basis.

Well, it looks to me like a lot of the more important things are left out. But still, no private things should really be public...That's just idiotic :?

 

 

 

Hehe, privates.

While this is shocking (another indicator to me that adults in Government are increasingly becoming left behind in the ICT world), I would point out Google probably store information about you than the government does, and they have very little restrictions placed on them at all.

 

 

 

I'm not saying the Government is any better in this situation, but the point I'm making is data protection needs to be improved across the whole board. I resent the fact that for the privilege of voting, I have several credit lenders spamming me with mail every week because they've bought the information off the Electoral Register (I know it's from the Register because the morons misspelt my name).

Social security - I don't understand America.