CARLOVIANS looking for a new home could be the victims of identity theft following the discovery that the planning department of Carlow County Council allow sensitive personal information to be published online.
The Nationalist can exclusively reveal that planning applications, which are submitted to the local authority, aren’t screened before being uploaded onto the internet.
The applications, which are sent by Carlow County Council to a company in Galway for scanning, are then posted online, with many sensitive documents fully available to members of the public.
Birth certificates, passports and bank account details are just some of the documents submitted with planning applications by men and women in an attempt to prove their connection with the area in which they wish to build.
And these documents, which can be used by hackers to steal a person’s identity, are readily available on the planning section of the council’s website.
In one particular case, a young man has had his bank account details, weekly wage details, birth certificate and a variety of other sensitive documents, uploaded to the internet by the local authority.
His mobile phone number, passport, P60, P45, tax credit certificates and end-of-year income levy certificates were also uploaded, as well as details belonging to his co-applicant.
Speaking to The Nationalist, the young man, who made a planning application with his partner last year, had “no idea” that his documents would become public knowledge when he submitted them. In fact, he only discovered the shocking truth when contacted by The Nationalist.
“I had no idea. Is that legal? I wasn’t made aware (by the council) that they would be put online. “It’s frightening … they could steal your identity.”
The planning department outsource the scanning of all applications and, according to county manager Tom Barry, “don’t screen stuff”.
“It appears we don’t screen stuff coming in from planning applications but we try to discourage people from sending sensitive stuff in. They send it in to prove where they are from; people use all sorts of information of what they might deem appropriate to prove their connection,” added Mr Barry.
Once a planning application is lodged, it is scanned “pretty quickly”, according to Mr Barry, who added that it was “a certainty” that there were many more applications online with sensitive information.
“We feel we’re covered because we tell people to be cautious on what they include, as it will be viewed by the public. It’s a public document but you can take it as a certainty that there are others online,” he conceded, before adding that applicants can make a request to have information removed from the website.