National ID Watch

Background

A public service by the Washington, DC Non-profit Liberty Coalition, NationalIDWatch.org provides hundreds of thousands of free personalized Identity Exposure Reports™ (IXRs) to individuals whose personal information has been publicly exposed. Each personalized IXR describes in detail what personal information has been exposed, under what circumstances, who is responsible, and the contact information of those responsible.

This website is not designed to:

• Find People: We do not aggregate personal information in our database, so it's not much use to investigators, criminals, or people looking for high school friends.
• Sell Personal Information: We are not data-miners, because we do not aggregate personal information in our database, nor do we rent, sell, give away or lease personal information.
• Give Identity Theft Protection Services: If you seek a qualified Identity Theft Protection Service, we can point you in a few good directions, but we do not provide those services ourselves.

We take privacy seriously. See our Privacy Practices for a detailed explanation of how we keep personal information safe.

This website is a free national registry of personalized data breach reports. Though it only covers a small percentage of the total number of reported breaches (roughly .2%), your Personalized Identity Exposure Report measures severity of personal information breaches by four key indicators:

• Size of the exposure, or number affected
• Sensitivity of the information exposed from an objective standpoint
• Duration of the exposure, and
• Distribution of the exposed information (ie, stolen laptop, exposed online, or dumped in a dumpster)

Daily media reports chronicle personal information breaches by organizations of all sizes and types. The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse estimates that since January, 2005 there have been hundreds of millions of "Data Breach" instances, or individuals whose sensitive personal information has been compromised, exposed, or stolen. In addition to these reported breaches, hundreds of thousands of exposed records go unreported, regardless of state law. A victim's right to full disclosure of the details surrounding a breach is at the heart of NationalIDWatch.org.

NationalIDWatch.org launched on July 18, 2007 as "SSNBreach.org," in response to a large breach of sensitive personal information in Louisiana. Since that time, NationalIDWatch.org has continued to document breaches, and be a resource for victims.

One of the cruel ironies of data breaches is that the only organization with information about the breach is the organization with the strongest incentive to hide or skew the details of the breach. Many organizations never report breaches to victims, much less issue a press release, regardless of local breach notification laws. Even the most well-intentioned and reputable organizations often issue vague, incomplete, blame-shifting or liability- reducing press releases that do little to inform or empower victims of personal information breaches. Until National ID Watch, victims have never heard the whole story.

The American consumer has lost a good deal of control over their most valuable asset: their own identity. Market forces and the legal system are failing to protect them.

Empowering victims to be their own advocates, NationalIDWatch.org documents the types of information exposed, without revealing any sensitive personal information in its database. NationalIDWatch.org empowers individuals to control the spread and abuse of their own identities by providing an unprecedented amount of detailed data breach documentation.

Identity Exposure Reports measure severity of personal information breaches by four key indicators:

• Size of the exposure, or number affected
• Sensitivity of the information exposed from an objective standpoint
• Duration of the exposure, and
• Distribution of the exposed information (ie, stolen laptop, exposed online, or dumped in a dumpster)

Purpose

Our goals are to:

1. Notify and Empower Victims of Personal Information Breach
2. Give Victims Tools to Mitigate Risk
3. Catalyze Change in State Legislatures and Public Attitudes
4. Uphold the Highest Standards of Privacy and Trust

Of course, our very first priority is to empower victims without empowering bad guys. NationalIDWatch.org's first and most important security feature is that the website does NOT contain any combination of sensitive personal information in its database: Period. So, even if someone got into the database,there's nothing to see. We explain our process in detail in our Privacy Promise.

Funding

NationalIDWatch.org is funded through the Liberty Coalition, donations through the Liberty Coaltion, occasionally some ad revenue, but mostly through donated time and effort. To date, all sources of income combined have failed to cover basic website development, operation and maintenance expenses, so please consider donating!