S.L. County loses 116 employees' SSNs

Disk containing personal information is missing

By Leigh Dethman
Deseret Morning News
Published: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 9:36 p.m. MDT
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Talk about employee appreciation: More than 100 Salt Lake County employees scheduled to be honored for their years of service instead learned they could all be victims of identity theft.

It wasn't exactly what one county employee was looking for in honor of her five years of work.

"I was in a rage," said the woman, who asked not to be named. "I work for the government, for heaven's sake, and they don't even protect me."

In total, the county lost 116 Social Security numbers for employees who are eligible to receive a pat on the back.

The problem started in February when the personnel division sent a computer disk to an outside vendor with the employees' names, addresses and Social Security numbers. The vendor needed the information in order to contact the employees so that they could choose an award to honor their service, said April Townsend, director of the county's administrative-services division.

Now the vendor can't find the disk.

Townsend sent a letter to all 116 employees last week alerting them to the problem.

"We've been working with this vendor for over 10 years," Townsend said Tuesday. "We were more comfortable than we should have been."

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In the letter, Townsend wrote, "At this time, there is no evidence that this information has been stolen or misused, and there is no suggestion of criminal intent."

Even so, the county is covering its tracks. County officials are now trying to find a way to stop using Social Security numbers as an identifier in county government.

Townsend blamed "previous administrations" for not budgeting money to remove Social Security numbers from the county's employee ID system.

Since the beginning of the year, however, her division has been working to reduce the numbers on computer systems to only the last four digits. The job is a tough one, she said, because it will take 2700 work hours to fully change everything in the system.

The Salt Lake County Council voted Tuesday to have a subcommittee investigate why the county is still using the personal identifiers in everyday situations. The council wants to make sure such a problem never happens again.

"This is a pretty darn serious thing and ought to be addressed," Councilman David Wilde said. "Are we doing everything we can in the county to make sure this type of security breach doesn't happen again?"

Townsend urged the employees to keep an eye on their credit by:

  • Contacting the major credit bureaus and place a fraud alert on credit reports.

  • Reviewing recent account activity for unauthorized charges or accounts.

  • Taking action should any unauthorized activity appear on their credit reports.

Townsend promised to reimburse the employees the cost of a subscription to a daily credit-monitoring program.

"I want to take this opportunity to apologize for this situation," Townsend wrote. "The personnel division knows the importance of securing employee information and makes every effort to do so."

E-mail: ldethman@desnews.com

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