California State Controller John Chiang has directed the Franchise Tax Board to remove Social Security Numbers from state tax liens. Tax liens are filed in county Recorder offices and entered into databases of tax liens and court judgments maintained by data aggregators, among which are Choicepoint, Merlindata and LexisNexis.
Current state law prohibits the Franchise Tax Board from publicly displaying an individual’s social security number in an effort to protect against identity theft. The law, though, provides an exception for reporting liens to third parties, such as financial institutions, employers and county recorders’ offices.
Chiang, who chairs the Franchise Tax Board, said the department will immediately begin lining out social security numbers and manually processing liens until a process is in place to automate the masking of social security numbers.
I alerted readers to this general trend a few weeks ago in, Why the judgments and liens databases will become obsolete.
How will this new policy affect private investigators, judgment collectors and background screeners?
[...] California UCC filings Web site shut down By Tamara Thompson A few weeks ago I wrote that the California State Controller ordered the removal of social security numbers from state tax liens. Now, Debra Bowen, the new California Secretary of State, has shut down the online UCC filings database in order to remove social security numbers from the UCC filings index. We have temporarily disabled the capability to perform online searches and orders. In order to prevent identity theft and protect the personal privacy of people whose information appears in documents filed with the Secretary of State, we are in the process of removing social security numbers from all copies and electronic images of UCC filings made available to the public. [...]