Linn Freedman writes:
… Generally, court filings are public records unless sealed from public access by a judge. Vast amounts of personal information contained in public records can be, and are, accessed by criminals in order to obtain personal information of individuals, which can be aggregated with other information, to perpetrate fraud and identity theft.
For this reason, most federal and state courts have adopted local rules over the years that prohibit the filing of sensitive personal information like full Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers in court records.
[…]
In Oklahoma, one woman is fighting back. She is suing the State of Oklahoma and eight District Attorneys for wrongfully disclosing her birth date and full Social Security number in publicly available court documents.
The suit, filed last week, alleges that DA’s from 11 different counties in Oklahoma regularly file the dates of birth and full Social Security numbers of anyone involved in a civil or criminal dispute in the court system, and that the information is available on the state’s electronic Supreme Court Network.
Read more on JDSupra.