Just when you think the IRS couldn’t get any more incompetent.
The agency accidentally released over 2,000 Social Security numbers, according to Public.Resource.org, a non-profit transparency group that posts public records online.
The incident involves the unwitting exposure of as many as 2,319 Social Security numbers, maybe more, according to a July 1 audit by the independent transparency and public-domain group Public.Resource.org. The identifying numbers were on the Internet for less than 24 hours, but the damage was done. And unfortunately, the data-breach concerns some of the most sensitive types of transactions: Those made by nonprofit political groups known as 527s.
In the grand scheme of things, this probably isn’t that big of a deal. The amount of data released was relatively small, was only available for a very short period of time, and was accessed by very few people, according to the audit.
Even so, the fact that this mistake happened in the first place is a bad sign. Is this really an agency we should be trusting with our healthcare data?