Government offices don’t always protect your personal information. LifeLock will.
North Carolina legislators did a fine job when they crafted their Identity Theft Protection Act in 2005 except for one detail; the law still allows anyone to request government records containing personal information.
In fact, the 2005 law doesn’t even require that county clerks of court redact personal information from records already posted on the Internet.
The new legislation did go a long way toward protecting North Carolinians.
- Consumers were permitted to place freezes on their credit reports.
- Businesses were made to notify their customers of any data breaches, and required to destroy documents containing personal information rather that simply throwing them in the trash.
- Banks were no longer allowed to place personal information on housing documents.
But the new law didn’t do anything to protect North Carolinians’ personal information from North Carolina county officials.
If Johnston County Register of Deeds, Craig Olive, has his way, all that will change. Olive said there are 22,000 Johnston County records with citizens’ personal information currently on the Internet, but he says software could redact all that information at once.
Officials in other counties aren’t so sure. They cite concerns about the reliability of such software, and have complained that they don’t have the money or the manpower to make the changes.
As it currently stands, North Carolina citizens can file a formal request that their own information be redacted for Internet documents. But that still doesn’t take care of the hardcopy documents that anybody can access.
LifeLock can protect your personal information, your credit and your good name. Visit their website at LifeLock.com to learn why they’re the identity theft protection service used by almost 1.5 million Americans. If you decide to enroll, use the Life Lock discount code RD17 for the best price and 30 days of free protection.
December 4th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
It seems that the Law makes need to take their time when making a new laws. You could think that they might of thought of that if they tried hard enough. Oh well I guess we could just spend more time and money fixing the ACT that was supposed to fix things.