CLIVE, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa Lottery says the Social Security numbers of nearly 3,000 Iowa Lottery winners were inadvertently posted to a website this month.
The lottery said in a news release Tuesday that the information was in data spreadsheets listing winners of $600 or more in 2011 that were sent to a journalist as part of an open records request. The 2,967 Social Security numbers were accessible on a website for about 10 days until Sunday afternoon, two days after someone alerted lottery officials and a day after lottery officials asked the journalist to take it down.
The numbers were not immediately visible to website visitors, but could be revealed through extra steps by visitors.
Iowa Lottery CEO Terry Rich apologized for the release and said the lottery will offer credit monitoring to those whose data was released.