On February 19, the National Center for Children and Families was alerted that some foster children’s personal information including Social Security numbers was exposed on the internet. An investigator hired by the agency tracked down the source of the breach: a family member of a former employee had inadvertently exposed the files via file-sharing software.
According to the NCCF’s notification (pdf), the former employee had “mistakenly assured agency officials at the time of her departure from the agency that no agency data existed on her personal computer.”