Maryland Employee Posts 3,000 SSNs

A Maryland state employee has been placed on administrative leave after posting the Social Security numbers and other personal information of nearly 3,000 clients of a state agency on his private company Web site.

The Baltimore Sun reported that officials with the Liberty Coalition, a non-profit that promotes privacy, discovered the postings on the third party Web site. Liberty Coalition officials said the information was posted on site from April 27 of this year to July 14. Coalition officials said they tried to notify state officials on July 9 but were not successful until July 12, after which the data was taken down.

The employee works for the state Department of Human Resources, which provides food stamps and other state benefits.

Department of Human Resources spokeswoman Nancy Lineman said there’s no evidence that the information was used for identity theft, and it’s not clear that the employee’s intent was to foster identity theft or any other fraud. But Department of Human Resources officials are investigating the incident and the employee could face disciplinary action.

DHR officials said they have mailed a letter with details about the breach to all affected clients. They also said affected clients will be offered a year of free credit monitoring.

Clients of DHR can enter their names at http://www.nationalidwatch.org/, a Liberty Coalition Web site, to see if they were among those affected.

Those interested in credit monitoring should call 800-332-6347 by October 29, state officials said.

A cached version of the employee’s Web site is here.