TACOMA, Wash.—A county in Washington inadvertently released nearly half a million partial Social Security numbers when responding to a routine public records request in December, according to county officials.
The Pierce County Auditor’s Office, which mistakenly released the sensitive data, said in a news release that the error was quickly spotted and that the person who accidentally received the SSN digits deleted them within two hours. The requester had not asked for the personal information, the auditor’s office said.
“First let me say that I am incredibly sorry that this happened,” Pierce County Auditor Linda Farmer said in statement. Farmer added that this was not a targeted hack but an employee error, and that “we have taken steps to ensure it does not happen again.”…