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Bored Searcher Finds Federal Privacy Breach
David Utter
Staff Writer
2007-04-23
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A farmer who queried Google about her family's farm discovered a website operated by the USDA and the Census Bureau displaying 63,000 Social Security numbers.
 | | Bored Searcher Finds Federal Privacy Breach |  |
A long-forgotten database allowed searchers to pull up entries on federal government money awarded through a couple of funding programs. Those entries included Social Security numbers, a key component to identity theft, and one government agencies have been moving away from using as a unique identifier for years.
The US Department of Agriculture said in a statement that it had not seen any evidence any of the information online had been misused. The agency will provide free credit monitoring to those affected by the exposure.
After learning of the issue, the USDA removed the data on April 13 from the website displaying it. That data had been provided by the US Census Bureau, and its public availability became known when Marsha Bergmeier was bored and decided to search for her family's farm. She found the link to the information on April 12.
The Washington Post reported Bergmeier had come across FedSpending.org, a site maintained by watchdog group OMB Watch. That led her to the federal information.
A week elapsed between the removal of the data and the public announcement of the problem. OMB Watch said in the Post that USDA tried to hide this news from the public:
"The bottom line is the government screwed up," said Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch. "What's really important is that they now try to rectify the problem. Thousands of research groups have copies of this site."
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Tags: USDA, Privacy, Social Security, Identity Theft
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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