Washington county cuts access to online records over identity theft fears

Snohomish County, Washington, plans to strip access to hundreds of thousands of public records from its online archives next month out of public concern over identity theft.

Auditor Carolyn Diepenbrock announced Wednesday that 61 types of documents - including marriage certificates, tax liens, divorces and death certificates - will be removed March 1 because they can contain Social Security numbers and mothers' maiden names.

About two dozen people have voiced concern in the past year that personal information was readily available to potential identity thieves, she said.

"There is a public perception that individuals are getting this information from our Web site and then committing identity theft," Diepenbrock said. She said she is trying to address those concerns.

Even so, she said, no one has been the victim of a crime as a result of online access to these documents.

"If you do research on identity theft, where people get that information, they're not getting it from us," Diepenbrock said. "But because there is a public perception, we're trying to ease the concern of our public by removing these documents."

County officials estimate 2.2 million public documents including about 11.1 million pages are recorded and indexed on the county's Web site, including property documents, marriage certificates and other legal forms. Anyone with a computer can search for and download most public documents recorded by the county since 1997.

Officials scanned, archived and posted online 337,000 documents last year. Of those, the county is moving to strip Internet access to about 34,000 of those. The county also will block access to thousands of documents scanned, archived and posted earlier.

In all, about 10 percent of all the documents that are currently available won't be accessible online. Internet access to the county's searchable index of records still will be available.

Read the full story at HeraldNet.com