Everyone hates jury duty. For a few hundred people living in Clark County, Nevada, there is a whole new reason to dislike the process. It was reported today that a data breach has occurred with the potential jurors list. It seems that an outside contractor that handles the information illegally sent this sensitive information to the private email address of one of its employs. There is no reason that this information should have left the secure server of the company and this fact launched an investigation into the incident. The investigation is still in progress, although some details have been released to the media.

The court sent out letters to the 380 affected individuals. Unfortunately, these letters did not specify whether or not the investigation suspected that the transfer of the sensitive material was an accident or if it was deliberate. At the same time, there was no discussion of when the breach occurred and how long it took the court to act on the information. In many of the recent data breaches, there has been considerable delay before notifying the affected parties, which has caused considerable amounts of stress to people once they learn of the crime.

It was originally feared that the information contained in the private email listed names, addresses, social security numbers, and birth dates. As the investigation has continued, this fear has decreased, as many of the accounts had personal data included, although it was incomplete and thus not nearly as large of a problem in terms of identity theft. However, this only applies to some of the affected people, although there are no further details about what percentage of the 380 falls into this category. The court did try to assure the public with the knowledge that there are a total of 1.7 million people on the juror list and that this breach is, fortunately, of a small nature.

While the court continues its investigation, it has announced that it is changing some of its policies. It will no longer list any private data on the forms that are supposed to be printed out about potential jurors. No word yet on how they plan to secure their system so that no future incidences occur, with sensitive material being sent to an inappropriate location. Authorities will determine what measures need to take place, since the court is a central component of the state government and needs to meet certain informational security criteria.

For those affected, officials are suggesting they contact the credit bureaus and place a free initial alert on their account. Knowing these alerts are only free at the beginning, more and more people are looking into ID theft subscription services, such as Lifelock. This company monitors all three credit bureaus for a minimal monthly fee and alerts its customers whenever a new credit card or loan application is opened. It then verifies that this is a legitimate application before allowing it to be approved.