The Arizona Republic reports that Maricopa County has removed death notices from its Web site because of the threat of identity theft.

“There is so much personal information on them: a mother’s maiden name, what they died from,” [Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell] said, adding that her office has been fielding complaints for years about the office’s practice of posting death-certificate images. The office quietly took them down last month.

Maricopa County requires the recording death certificates when a surviving property owner terminates a joint-tenancy deed after one of the owners has died, Purcell said.

Until last month, those images were up for public viewing with about 110 million other documents, most of which involve real-estate transactions.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008 and is filed under Identification, Medical data, Security, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Possibly related posts:

• Update on Catsouras v. California Highway Patrol, Concerning Privacy After Death
• Metropolitan News-Enterprise: Court of Appeal Revives Privacy Suit Over Death Photos on Internet in California
• Arizona Republic: Graduate-school admission test to use palm scan