Identity Theft Legislation

A story in today’s paper reports that a compromise bill that will give Massachusetts one of the most “proconsumer” statutes in the country regarding the prevention of identity theft will soon be enacted on Beacon Hill. While I haven't seen the final version of this bill, legislation of this type is of particular interest at the registry of deeds since our records contain thousands of social security numbers, a prime ingredient in identity theft. Social security numbers are contained in every state and federal tax lien and release, in many death certificates and in more than a few mortgages. As long as those document remain in a dusty book on a shelf in the courthouse, they're not much of a threat. But digitize those same documents and place them on the Internet as we have done with millions of records and they create much more exposure. To curtail this exposure, we’ve already made one pass through our records here in Lowell, redacting more than 65,000 social security numbers thus far. To protect the identities of innocent persons, government agencies should begin the task of removing social security numbers from online records, but such a project is a complex, costly and time-consuming task. In the meantime, if you discover that your social security number appears in an online record at your local registry of deeds, you should call that office, identify the document where the SSN is located, and ask that it be removed.