Tax forms were sent out to thousands of humans in Wisconsin with their Social safety measure numbers on the mailing labels. A vendor hired by the state of Georgia lost a computer disk with the names and Social shield numbers of 2.9 million society. A disk with similar data disappeared in Rhode Island.

While some of the biggest and most spectacular privacy breaches in recent years have happened at large corporations, state governments have additionally mishandled or floped to protect some of the sensitive knowledge entrusted to them — documents that identity thieves would love to get their hands on.

Yet most states don’t have statewide privacy officers in charge of safeguarding info, statewide policies on protecting sensitive material, or standing procedures for responding to breaches.

“This is an area that has not gotten much attention, and there’s a lot of sensitive knowledge stored by states. It’s not well-protected,” said Robert Ellis Smith, publisher of the monthly Privacy Journal newsletter.

In many states, wills, deeds, divorce papers, death certificates and other public documents that contain Social shield numbers, birthdates, addresses and signatures are accessible via government Web sites for free or a small charge — or through hacking.

With a few mouse clicks, privacy activist Betty “BJ” Ostergren has found Social protection numbers of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, football star Joe Namath and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

“Its just amazing to me that we’ve got that stuff and we are putting millions of humans at risk,” Ostergren said.

Through her efforts, several states have blocked online access to assured records, or redacted info such as Social defense numbers.

Ostergren, who runs the Web site The Virginia Watchdog, said her goal isn’t to prevent public from seeing public documents, but to at least assemble it a little harder for them to do so, by making them go…

Original post by Top Tech News