Kari Cobham reports:
Every 10 years, Flagler County’s building department purges its files.
Only this time, county employees dumped about 15 boxes of applications, deeds, notices and plans in the trash — some of which included residents’ driver’s license and Social Security numbers.
“We did wrong; it is a mistake we made,” County Administrator Craig Coffey said.
Officials say building employees removed paperwork from a Dumpster outside the county administrative building Saturday, sorted and shredded less than a box full of sensitive materials, and bagged the rest.
“It was less than 24 hours and we fixed it,” Coffey said.
But the county’s paper trail faux pas might not be the worst of it for residents concerned about identity theft.
“Unfortunately, this same information still exists in the county’s official records online,” Coffey wrote recently in an online forum in response to public outcry. “Hence, they are viewable with any computer, forget the Dumpster.”
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