THE VIRGINIA WATCHDOGTM
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10/9/12 - Read this Star-Telegram article about Tarrant County, Texas where millions of SSNs were online on the Court Clerk's records site and being used by an identity theft ring in New Mexico to steal SSNs and other info from the records. Those specific records have been online for many years and The Virginia WatchdogTM has tried to alert people to the problem. Clerks have not listened and seem to be oblivious to the problem which still exists in many Texas court sites and also in court sites all over the U.S. Does one have to hold hands with these elected officials (or draw them a picture to get them to see the light and remove the records off line until they can redact the SSNs? Apparently so...
SSNs are still just a click away on the world wide web and they were most likely put there by some stupid elected official. Many County/City Court clerks and other state agencies all over the United States still have records on the internet showing SSNs and other personal information.
And your personal health info is being put into electronic format without your permission and anyone can get to it. It may already be on some website. Remember the late Farrah Fawcett's case where a low end hospital worker got into her info on a computer and sold it to the tabloids? If the records had been on paper, that would not have happened. Read this scary but informative article... and then read about Patient Privacy Rights/electronic health records.
What should be put into the health care law should be a line that says "patient consent is required for the use and disclosure of medical records." Will that line be added? Probably not because OUR gov't wants OUR info available online and so now we have lost control of our privacy (which we do have a right to) and people have no clue this is happening.
We should also have to right to "OPT OUT" of having our records in electronic format. Check out this site. No computer is safe or secure... Remember the Virginia Prescription database held by the State Health Dept. that was hacked into in 2009 and millions of records and SSNs were stolen? Well...
Go to more articles in our archives about SSNs online thanks to stupid elected or appointed officials.
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* Read about and email Betty "BJ" Ostergren, Founder/Editor/Publisher of The Virginia Watchdog TM
* Hot links including this new one..."Patient Privacy Rights" which deals with electronic medical records (a bad idea)
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