The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office said it accidentally posted the Social Security numbers of some jail inmates on their website over the past few days.
The numbers were visible if the daily listing of inmates of the sheriff’s website were downloaded and exported to an Excel file, the sheriff’s office said.
Colorado Public Radio, who first reported this story, said they were notified Tuesday by a family member of an inmate — whose full SSN was listed online — about the data breach. The news organization confirmed with at least one other inmate that her full social security number was included next to her name.
CPR could not confirm how many numbers were actually social security numbers, but files from Dec. 15, Dec. 18 and Dec. 19 listed hundreds of inmates with nine-digit numbers associated with their names.
The radio station notified the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office about the information just before 1 p.m. Tuesday, according to the article, and the information had been deleted from the online lists within 90 minutes.
The sheriff’s office said in a statement released at 5:15 p.m. Tuesday that all SSNs have been removed from the data set the spreadsheet was generated from to prevent this from happening again.
Upon investigation, the sheriff’s office said it found that around 10 a.m. Dec. 15, the jail’s daily listing report went down.The data was re-exported and an incorrect field was selected, using the Social Security number instead of the charges associated with the inmate’s case.
The sheriff’s office added that going forward, IT staff will run a review daily to ensure information on online jail reports does not include any information that isn’t public data.
The sheriff’s office said it is working to notify affected inmates and assist them in protecting their credit. On Wednesday morning, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office said they do not yet know exactly what assisting affected inmates will look like, as the initial focus has been on removing the information and preventing another instance.
“We sincerely apologize to everyone that was affected and will diligently work to ensure that this never takes place again,” the release said.
