Social Security numbers visible in window of mailed envelopes

COLUMBUS (AP) -- More than 7,500 people received letters from the city's income tax division with their Social Security numbers visible through the envelope window, a problem blamed on a computer glitch.
No recipients have reported problems with identity theft, and the numbers will not be visible from the outside on future mailings, city tax administrator Melinda Frank said.
Social Security numbers serve as city taxpayers' account numbers and are included in mailings for identification.
The 7,601 mailings were sent Aug. 4 to alert people who had filed tax estimates for this year that they could pay their balances online.
Because the nine-digit numbers were followed by one or two additional characters, it wasn't obvious that they were Social Security numbers, Frank said.
"To their next-door neighbor who doesn't know what their Social Security number is, it's a line of numbers with an alpha letter after it," she said.
The tax division received three complaints by phone and two by e-mail.
"Yes, the nine digits are followed by a letter, but it's not that hard to look at it and figure out that it might be a Social Security number," one taxpayer wrote.
"You would think that in this day of ID theft, the last thing a taxing authority would want to do is expose all their taxpayers to identity theft and open the city up to being sued."