The Virginia Bureau of Insurance says it made all Virginia insurance agents’ Social Security numbers accessible to the public this summer.
The bureau accidentally included 202,000 agents’ Social Security numbers with the agents’ Web profiles from June 13 through July 31.
Visitors who simply looked at the site in the usual way would not have noticed the Social Security numbers, but users who chose the “view page source” option on their browsers could have seen the Social Security numbers, officials say.
The bureau took the Social Security numbers off the Web July 31, the same day the bureau found out about the problem, officials say.