Hampton Screws its Residents
No, they are not widening Interstate 64 yet again. No, they are not closing down Mercury Blvd. again. This time its a data breach.
As if having to live in Hampton Va isn’t bad enough sometimes, the city itself is putting all residents that are homeowners at risk of identity theft. And because the data is coupled with the plots, mortgage information and current residence, it is very easy for a hacker or other curious citizen to remortgage a Hampton resident’s house without the knowlege of the real home owner!
It appears that some genius in the titles department decided it would make sense to create a massive database and place it in the lobby so anyone can search on residential data. While this is common practice allowed under the law, the way it is supposed to work is that the information is available online, but personal information such as social security numbers are kept secret. Hampton has this database available already online. What you don’t do is put a secondary system in the lobby of the title office that includes all of the protected data.
Someone is going to be fired for this. And they may end up in jail too.
From the Daily Press here:
HAMPTON — Hampton’s treasurer and chief of police ripped a public computer out of the Hampton Circuit Court building Wednesday, after they found hundreds of Social Security numbers on display.
Police officers are breaking down the computer’s hard drive and trying to determine how many Social Security numbers were in the database and how many people had access to them. The computer appeared to include data on homeowners from across the city, but not everyone’s Social Security number.
During a 20-minute search late last week, a Daily Press reporter found and printed – for free – the full names, Social Security numbers and home addresses of a slew of prominent city officials and their spouses.
The computer had data on two General Assembly members, six City Council members, the mayor, city manager, treasurer, commissioner of the revenue and head of economic development. “This is one of the biggest IT (information technology) screw ups I’ve ever heard of,” said Commissioner of the Revenue Ross A. Mugler. “I’m in awe that this could happen. I’m really outraged.”
The computer was put in the court records building sometime early in 2002 to help title searchers go through public real estate records to make sure that no back taxes were left on a property. The clerk of court maintains a handful of other computers in the office, but the computer that was compromised held information from the treasurer’s office. Treasurer Molly Ward first heard about the breach around 2 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon.
“The instant anybody told me, I walked over there with the chief of police and we dismantled the thing ourselves,” Ward said. “We’re taking it very seriously. That’s why there is a criminal investigation.”
A nice video of this is located here.
