Users of Washington's King County Recorder's Office Website can often peruse personal information, such as Social Security numbers, according to a recent discovery by KIRO 7 Eyewitness News. The county officials, including officials from the King County Sheriff Department, were unaware of this security issue.

"I was shocked," said John Urquhart, a sergeant with sheriff's department. "I was shocked. I didn't realize that Social Security numbers were available in such a fairly easy manner to get."

Others in the community are fearful that criminals will uncover this information and will use it to steal individuals' identities from the county's database. Although no one believes this information has compromised anyone's safety yet, it still poses a security threat, according to Reagan Dunn, a councilman for the county.

"Clearly this is an avenue that people have been using to perpetrate the identity theft," Dunn said. "It's not thousands of records; it's actually millions of records, millions of pages of records that we have online here in our index. We don't have a process to go back, and we don't have the ability under the law to go back and alter public documents."

Dunn added that he believes people need to be told that their personal information has been placed online by the county and that it could place them in harm's way.

A call to the county's supervisor of records, Diane Mickunas-Ries, was not returned to Source of Title prior to publication date.

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What you should know to protect your family Shredding your documents and monitoring your credit will not protect you if your local or state government is publishing the same  information on the World Wide Web Learn what your county government is telling the world about you. Visit FindMyID.com. Volunteer researchers will assist you for free. Demand your rights. Submit your case for possible class action lawsuit. This group of attorneys offers free legal evaluation of your specific case. Click here for legal help and a free evaluation of your possible case

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