Saturday, January 21, 2012

Personal information for more than 2,200 Veterans accidentally posted on Genealogy website

It's hard to believe, but according to an article in Stars and Stripes, more than 2,200 veterans had their personal information accidentally posted on the genealogy website Ancestry.com last year. Apparently, some Department of Veterans Affairs officials supplied the information to Ancestry.com in March 2011 as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. The records were supposed to only contain information on deceased veterans, but also included more than 2,200 living veterans due to a department error.

Since Genealogy Today tracks all new releases from database publishers, it was pretty easy to figure out the database in question. Looks like it was the "U.S., Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010," released on November 1st, 2011 and no longer accessible.

According to a statement released by Jerry Davis, the VA's chief information security officer, all of the information has been removed from Ancestry.com, but it makes you wonder why it took so long for them to discover this error.

For additional details, read the Stars and Stripes article, "Veterans' personal information accidentally posted on Ancestry.com."

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