Virginia Won't Stop Publishing People's Social Security Numbers; But Will Fine You For Republishing Them

Legal Issues

from the backwards-thinking dept

Apparently, the state of Virginia has been publishing various government documents on its websites that reveal the social security numbers of various residents. Betty “BJ” Ostergren thought this was a problem — and when the state wouldn’t listen to her, she decided to try to get more attention by republishing those documents on her own website. Basically, in an effort to show why it’s wrong for Virginia to post people’s SSNs, she’s reposting them.

So how did the state of Virginia respond? Did it stop posting documents that exposed SSNs? Not at all. Instead, it passed a new law that let it continue to publish documents exposing SSNs, but would fine anyone like Ostergren who reposted that info on their own websites. In other words, instead of fixing the problem, it simply decided to fine the woman who helped highlight the problem. The ACLU and Ostergren are now suing the state to protest this new law. While I don’t necessarily agree with Ostergren for republishing the SSNs exposed by the state, it does seem pretty ridiculous for the state to go after her, rather than to stop exposing SSNs.

Filed Under: aclu, privacy, social security numbers, virginia, whistle blowing

Stealing Credit From A Baby

Scams

from the growing-concerns dept

With more publicity talking about identity fraud, and more people checking to make sure they haven’t been victims of identity fraud scams, apparently the type of identity fraud that’s on the rise is taking social security numbers from kids. It’s still a small part of the total identity fraud problem, and it’s not so much an online phenomenon as most cases involve family members, but it’s much more problematic, as it’s often not identified until many years later when the kid actually applies for a credit card. For all the data that the big credit firms keep on people, you would think they’d have something about a person’s age.

Filed Under: children, credit agencies, fraud, identity fraud, social security numbers