Raleigh DMV office throws personal information in trash
RALEIGH (WTVD) -- The North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles is warning customers who visited one office in Raleigh of a possible personal information breach after records were thrown in the trash instead of being shredded as they're supposed to be.
It happened at the office on Spring Forest Road.
Officials said the records of an estimated 24,000 customers who visited the office between last September and early March are involved.
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A shredder in the office was not working and the records were being stored until it was fixed. A cleaning crew threw them away thinking they were trash.
Before the DMV became aware of the mistake, the papers were taken to a landfill and buried. Officials said most of the documents could include full names, birthdates, and addresses, but nearly 400 could also contain Social Security numbers.
The DMV said it doesn't believe anyone's information has been compromised at this point, so the notifications that will go out to customers are merely a warning of a "potential" breach.
"Precautionary more than anything. What we want to do is to make sure that the public knows that we're their partner in this and that if for some reason they do have an issue we're here. But, no, we wanted to make sure that transparency and good government and we're letting them know that we found out about this incident. But just to be clear, we still have not heard from one person that there's a problem," NC Department Chief Deputy Secretary David Howard explained.
If you are one of the 24,000 people who visited the office between September and March, officials say you need to do one thing - simply monitor your credit.
