With the presidential primaries finally settled, many American are turning their attention toward November for the show-down between John McCain and Barack Obama. Unfortunately, not all Americans can let this be the sole point of their attention. This is especially true for the citizens of Pennsylvania. In the crucial swing state, many voters understand that the primaries can be very important and many took steps to make sure that their voice was heard and vote counted.

In an effort to streamline the voter registration process, the state government set up a website that allowed users to enter their personal information and register without the hassle of having to send any forms in through the mail. This system was working quite well, with over 30, 000 individuals participating in the early days of its operation. Sadly to report, those 30,000 people are now at risk for identity theft. A severe data breach of the system took place that exposed a variety of personal information, including birth dates and social security numbers, to the public. The state has not yet said how the breach happened or what security measures were in place to prevent such an issue. Outside reports state that the breach occurred because of a simple programming error, although these are unconfirmed reports.

While the presidential election is far from being a conclusion, this is now a period of considerable unrest for the 30,000 voters in the state of Pennsylvania who registered online through the state’s website. There have been no reports of identity theft at this moment, but it is still early in the process and authorities are not optimistic. One was reported as saying, “When the breach is this large, you just have to hope we caught it soon enough and that people are protected.” Within a day of being alerted that the website was functioning incorrectly, it was shut down by the state. Despite the programming glitch, many are praising the state’s network administrators for acting so promptly to limit the extent of the damage.

There has been no indication about how the state plans to contact the affected individuals. People who know they registered within the state through the website are advised to be vigilant in situations regarding their identities. A few individuals who were available to talk on the issue said that they were investing in subscriptions to ID theft services. While a variety of companies and options are available, the majority of people we talked to have decided on Lifelock. Regardless of the company that one chooses, personal identity experts are advising people to take precautions. As one investigator, who wished to remain anonymous, stated, “Too many people wait until something bad has happened to them before they protect themselves. Lots of people have car insurance, but all too few take the threat to their identities seriously enough until it is too late.”

Tags: lifelock

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 1st, 2008 at 1:30 am and is filed under Government Breaches, Individuals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.