Welcome to this week’s Tip of the Hat!
A driver’s license card is the first document many people use to prove their identity, be it at work, or the bank, or the airport. The card has key information needed for organizations and institutions: name, date of birth, address, photo, and the illustrious driver’s license number. Driver’s license cards can be a convenient form of identification, but it can also be a convenient way for your patrons’ identities to be stolen if your library is not careful in its handling of the card’s information.
As part of the library card registration process, many public libraries require some form of identification with a current address to confirm the patron’s home address. These libraries almost always accept driver’s license cards as one form of identification. But what do libraries do with the information on the card? Some record the driver’s license number in the patron record, while others take a photocopy scan of the card (yes, this has happened!). Several libraries use specially programmed barcode scanners to automatically populate the fields in the patron record from the information provided from the driver’s license barcode.
Each method carries its level of risk to the library patron’s privacy. Storing driver’s license numbers in the patron record or other places can open the patron up to identify theft if the library’s systems or physical spaces are compromised. There are various ways to compromise a physical or electronic space. We are familiar with the story of a person breaking into the system to steal information, but sometimes it is a staff person who steals the information. We also can’t forget that a leak is as damaging as a breach – sometimes staff leave the patron record up on the screen at public service desks, or a report printout is left on a desk for anyone to see or take.
Overall, the best way to mitigate the risk of a breach or leak of driver’s license numbers is to not collect or store driver’s license numbers. In the collection stage of the patron data lifecycle, we decide what data to collect. The data you collect should be tied to a specific, demonstrated business need at the point of collection. If you are collecting driver’s license numbers as a way to verify patrons and addresses, what are the business needs for collecting and storing that number in the patron record? You can achieve the same business need by other means, including creating a process of validating the patron record information with the identification without recording additional personal information in the record. Another consideration is that while driver’s license cards are a convenient form of identification, the card might have a name that the patron no longer uses and might have other outdated or incorrect information, including address information if the state does not mail a new card when there is an address change. Finally, not all patrons have driver’s license cards, and your patron registration policies and procedures need to accommodate this reality.
Even if you don’t collect or store the driver’s license number, there are still ways in which the library might inadvertently collect more patron information than they need from the card. Scanning driver’s license barcodes to auto-populate patron registration forms and records can save time in data entry, but be aware that these barcodes carry much more information than what is presented on the card, including gender and even Social Security Numbers. The software that you use to scan the barcodes should only record the information needed for the patron form and not store the additional information in the barcode. Your software vendor should have information about how they treat this extra data; if they do not, then the vendor product is a potential security risk for the library and the patrons which needs to be addressed with the vendor.
No matter how your library handles driver’s license cards, your library should be actively reviewing privacy practices on a regular basis. In 2019, the Contra Costa County Library System decided to stop collecting driver’s license numbers and purged existing numbers from their patron records. This decision came just at the right moment – the library system suffered a ransomware attack at the beginning of 2020. While recent reports state that no personal data was compromised, the risk of identity theft to library patrons would have been much greater if the driver’s license numbers were still stored at the library. In short, it’s never too late to review policies and procedures around patron address verification at your library!