November 16, 2012

Chicago Board of Elections site exposes job applicant info

More than 1,000 individuals who applied to work at Chicago polling sites on Election Day had their personal information exposed on the Chicago Board of Elections website.

How many victims? 1,200.

What type of personal information? Names, addresses, driver's license numbers, and the last four digits of Social Security numbers.

What happened? When a temporary site for the board of elections was created Nov. 6, information that was normally password protected became publicly viewable on the FTP website for chicagoelections.com.

What was the response? On Tuesday, security firm Forensicon notified the board of elections about the breach, and the information was immediately removed from the site. The agency plans to contact affected job applicants.

Details: The Chicago Board of Elections dealt with a larger breach in 2006, when about 780,000 registered voters' information was posted on its website.

Source: chicagotribune.com, Chicago Tribune, “Chicago election site exposed personal information,” Nov. 13, 2012.

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