US Census Bureau Posts 63K SSNs Online
 

For more than a decade, the Census Bureau posted on a public Web site the Social Security numbers of 63,000 people who received financial aid, officials said yesterday. The apparent violation of federal privacy law prompted concerns about identity theft.

Government officials removed the data from the Web site on April 13, the day they were alerted to the breach by an Illinois farmer who discovered the numbers while surfing the Internet. They did not publicize the matter until yesterday, saying they needed the delay to enable information-security officials to contact those whose numbers were revealed and to contact "at least a half-dozen" mirror sites.

Being the nice guys that they are, they are giving those affected a year of free credit report monitoring. I am sure someone who has their identity stolen will be happy to receive the little gift and will consider it full compensation for the hours they spend on the phone fucking around with their bank.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...042002208.html

They have been doing it for 10 years and someone just now noticed??? WTF?

who cares

Credit report monitoring is already free. I had my account put on "watch" for 6 months and they sent me everything I ever wanted to know. All I had to do was contact one of the agencies and they notified the other guys for me. All automated.