14 DAY TRIAL // Maricopa County Recorder's Office has decided to take death certificates offline from their website due to concerns regarding the increasing number of identity theft incidents. The documents, which are still public records, can now be accessed only upon submission of an official request form.
The Maricopa County covers the state's largest city and capital, Phoenix, and their Recorder's Office is considered by many one of the best in US. The office was the first in US to publish their records online electronically and the over 110 million documents they contain date back to 1971. Considering all this, the decision to take offline the death certificates was not an easy one, but the concerns over privacy and identity theft won over the pride of the office.
Death certificates are indispensable to complete real-estate transactions like the termination of joint-tenancy deeds after one of the owners has passed away. However, since the state of Arizona has one of the highest rates of identity fraud in US, this step was considered necessary. The documents contain the exact sensitive personal information fraudsters require in order to pull off such scams.
"There is so much personal information on them: a mother's maiden name, what they died from," commented County Recorder Helen Purcell for the Arizona Republic. She also pointed out that the office had been receiving complaints for several years regarding the privacy issue having these certificates online implied. The same reason also pushed the office to start removing, since a few months, the Social Security Numbers from all documents that are accessible online. Ms. Purcell estimates that the completion of this task could cost the county $5 million.
The certificates can still be accessed electronically, but now an official application is required; it contains the applicant's personal information such as name, address, phone number and even a notarized signature. Purcell explains that cutting electronic access to these documents entirely wouldn't make sense as this process saves the staff time and resources. “About one-third of the people who own property in Arizona don't live here, and we don't have room for 4 million people in our front office,” she added.