Personal Data Of Thousands Posted On Indygov.org Website, Undiscovered For More Than A Week
Personal information of about 3,300 people charged with minor drug and alcohol offenses was accidentally posted on the city of Indianapolis’ new Web site for 11 days in late September and early this month, according to official release in Wednesday.
The file contained names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers of 3,300 people charged with minor offenses during 2006 and 2007. It was inadvertently posted on the indygov.org Web site on Sept. 29 during a site upgrade, said Information Services Agency spokeswoman Barbara Thompson. The mistake wasn’t discovered until Oct. 9, when the file was immediately removed, Thompson said. As an added precaution, the entire site was removed from the Internet and replaced with its old version.
“This is an unfortunate example of human error; however, once we discovered that personal information was posted, ISA took aggressive action to correct the problem, to notify the affected individuals and to prevent this type of disclosure from happening again,” said Kevin Ortell, interim chief information officer for ISA.
City-County Councilwoman Angela Mansfield, who had criticized the upgrade of the Web site as a waste of taxpayer money, said the latest problem is disturbing. “If you’re going to change it, you should make it better, not create a situation where information is revealed that could be used for identity theft,” she said.
The agency began mailing letters to those affected this week. A hot line was also established at 317-327-5001 to provide more information.
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