Hal M. Bundrick reports:
Your charitable intentions could be exposing you to identity theft. Research conducted by security firm Identity Finder has found hundreds of thousands of examples of exposed personal data contained in the annual tax returns required to be filed by tax exempt organizations.
These IRS Form 990s are scanned and open to public inspection.
While the documents are supposed to exclude non-public personal information, the study found more than 130,000 nonprofit organizations have published an estimated 630,000 Social Security numbers since 2001. The exposed personal information belongs to high school and college scholarship recipients, community foundation recipients, board members, employees and donors.
In response to a query from Identity Finder, the IRS said the risk of exposure is low.
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