It's hard to say exactly how many of the 3,600 county governments around the country are posting sensitive data on the Web, said Mark Monacelli, president of the Property Records Industry Association, a Durham, N.C.-based industry group set up to facilitate the recording of and access to public property information.

But it's safe to assume that a large number of them are, said Darity Wesley, CEO of La Mesa, Calif.-based Privacy Solutions Inc., which offers consulting services to the real estate industry. "I think a lot of [county] recorders have been putting public land records on the Internet without any concern about who has access to them," Wesley said.

Sue Baldwin, director of the Broward County Records Division in Florida, said all of the state's counties are subject to a law requiring them to maintain Web sites for public records, many of which contain sensitive data.

A new Florida statute requires counties by the start of next year to black out Social Security, bank account, and credit and debit card numbers from document images that are already posted online. Also starting on Jan. 1, county recorders will be given the authority to black out the same numbers from new documents. For now, recorders have "no statutory authority to automatically remove" such information from documents, Baldwin said. She added that Broward County residents who want sensitive data immediately excised from public records must file written requests.

Baldwin and Carol Fogelsong, the assistant comptroller for Florida's Orange County, both downplayed the privacy and security issues of making full images of records available online, noting that anyone can view the actual documents at county offices.