Slashdot Mirror
Government-Aided Phishing
Anonymous writes "A Florida county is posting the Social Security numbers, bank account info and other sensitive data of hundreds of thousands of current and former residents on its public Web site, Computerworld is reporting. A county official says there's no problem, since the postings are in compliance with state law requiring public availability of records." From the article: "The breach stems from the county's failure to redact or remove sensitive data from images of public documents such as property records and family court documents, Hogman said. Included in the documents that are publicly available are dates of birth and Social Security numbers of minors, images of signatures. passport numbers, green card details and bank account information."
What the hell made Florida ever think that this was a good idea?
The fact that it's FLORIDA. Florida would be a lovely place, if not for the people who live there - especially the politicians!
This data breach is, without question, criminally irresponsible. Wanna bet none of the inbred morons responsible is ever brought to trial?
I'm a Canadian computer geek who wants American citizenship - the only thing keeping me from wgetting the entire site and building an identity is the fact that I'm not a complete asshole.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
On the plus side, the more SSNs (not a secure identifier) and bank account numbers (everyone you've ever written a check to has it) are out in the open, the less valuable they become to fraudsters.
At least, they would be, if institutions recognized that they are pretty worthless identification to begin with.