Social Security numbers exposed on Iowa land-records Web site
In the latest example of a data privacy controversy that has become increasingly familiar nationwide, it came to light this week that a publicly accessible Web site maintained by the Iowa County Recorders Association (ICRA) has been posting land records containing the Social Security numbers of thousands of state residents — including Gov. Chet Culver — since January 2005.
The IowaLandRecords.org site has been largely inaccessible since Tuesday, when The Des Moines Register ran the first in a series of stories about the issue.
Phil Dunshee, project manager for IowaLandRecords.org, said Friday that the Web site has literally been overwhelmed by traffic, forcing workers to take down the server that runs it for maintenance. "My impression is that individuals were trying to get into the system to check their own records, but I don't have any data to validate that," he said.
According to Dunshee, the site probably contains online images of more than 10 million public records altogether. In a press release issued Wednesday (download PDF), the ICRA said that effective immediately, it would restrict access to mortgage documents and the Uniform Commercial Code financing statements that banks and other creditors file when individuals take out certain types of loans. Doing so "should allay concerns" about Social Security numbers being compromised, the ICRA said.
Dunshee said that once the site comes back up, users will still be able to access a basic index of documents — but not the full images of them, as was the case until earlier this week. Before the restrictions were imposed, anyone who registered with the site could access the full documents. But thus far, in the more than three years that the records have been available via the site, there is no indication that those access privileges have been misused, Dunshee claimed.
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