WESTERLY – Forty-seven people were affected by the inadvertent posting of Social Security numbers on www.TownofWesterly.com, according to Westerly Police Chief Edward A. Mello.
The problem was not a security breach, he emphasized; it was a report that was generated incorrectly, then posted online. It was not clear how long that report was online nor how many people viewed it.
Each month, Mello explained, the Westerly Police Department provides the Licensing Board with a summary report that includes activities at all town liquor establishments. “We began e-mailing those reports to the clerk’s office in a PDF format some time in 2006,” he said. “The clerk’s office posts the Licensing Board agenda and posts this PDF file as an attachment.”
Somehow, in the PDF version of the report for December 2006, “we included the Social Security numbers of the people mentioned; 47 individuals who were listed in that 40-something page report had their Social Security numbers mentioned.” The remainder of the information that was posted is routinely included in the public version of the monthly report, he said.
The problem was noticed last Thursday by “a third party,” who contacted the police chief.
Within two hours, he said, the town had removed the file from its Web site. But, he noted, that wasn’t the end of the problem. Some services, including Google and Yahoo, create copies of Web sites when they are posted.
“We made an immediate request … to remove those cache files,” the chief said. The copies of the Web site that included the problem file “were removed as soon as possible – by Monday morning – with the assistance of Google and Yahoo.”
Since then, Mello said, he has contacted each person affected, in writing; the letters included “some suggestions about consumer protection.”
