VA offers free credit monitoring after mistaken data release

The Department of Veterans Affairs is offering free credit monitoring for one year to more than 2,200 veterans after the agency mistakenly released personal information of those vets online.

Social security numbers and other personal information were posted on Ancestry.com after the VA released data through a Freedom of Information Act request, according to a VA statement.

“Fortunately, no personal health information was included in this data release. Ancestry.com has worked with us and immediately removed all the information that we had supplied them,” said Jerry Davis, VA’s chief information security officer, in the statement.

VA is currently notifying veterans who may be affected by the data release, VA said.

So far, the statement said, “There is no indication personally identifiable information of any veteran has been misused.”

The information about living veterans was published as part of a database of deceased veterans, and the VA is still determining why this error occurred, the agency said.

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