County Lookup The Problem What Counties Can Do Take Action Resources Contact
County Lookup The Problem What Counties Can Do Take Action Resources Contact

Resources for Protecting
County Public Record Systems

A Practical Toolkit for Counties, Vendors, and Abstractors

Public Records Safety provides actionable resources designed to help counties, system vendors, and local abstractors better understand and manage the risks associated with automated data harvesting.

These materials are built to support real-world implementation—not theory. Whether you are managing a county portal, developing records systems, or working directly with public data, these resources are designed to help you take immediate, practical steps toward protecting your infrastructure.

Download

Everything you need to advocate for public records protection in your county. Download, print, and share.

Research Briefing

Comprehensive evidence base on automated data harvesting: threat landscape, who's affected, legislative developments, expert analysis, and the case for county-level action. Fully sourced with academic, industry, and government references.

County Action Guide

Step-by-step playbook organized into three tiers (Do This Week / Do This Quarter / Do This Year). Plain-language instructions for county officials, IT staff, and recorders. Includes sample policy language, contract clauses, and an implementation checklist.

Fact Sheet

One-page summary presenting key statistics, audit findings, and critical insights on automated data harvesting risks, designed in a print-friendly format for meetings, board presentations, stakeholder briefings, and quick reference use.

Why These
Resources Matter

County public record systems were never designed for automated, large-scale extraction.

What began as digitization for accessibility has unintentionally created an environment where bots and AI systems can access and extract massive volumes of sensitive data—often without detection, control, or accountability.

This creates a growing gap between:

  • Public access requirements
  • System capacity and security
  • Privacy expectations
  • Operational reality

These resources exist to help close that gap.

Without safeguards in place, counties face:

System Performance Issues

  • Slower response times for legitimate users
  • Increased server strain and outages
  • Higher infrastructure costs

Operational Burden

  • Increased records requests and appeals
  • Staff time diverted to troubleshooting and access issues
  • Difficulty distinguishing legitimate users from bots

Security Exposure

  • Lack of visibility into who is accessing data
  • No enforcement of acceptable use policies
  • Vulnerability to coordinated scraping campaigns

Public records contain highly sensitive information, including:

  • Property ownership details
  • Financial data (mortgages, liens)
  • Legal filings
  • Signatures and identity-linked records

When aggregated at scale, this data becomes a powerful tool for:

  • Fraud
  • Identity theft
  • Harassment or stalking
  • Synthetic identity creation

The issue is no longer theoretical—it is already happening.

Sample robots.txt for County Sites

# Block AI training bots from county property records User-agent: GPTBot Disallow: / User-agent: CCBot Disallow: / User-agent: anthropic-ai Disallow: / User-agent: Google-Extended Disallow: / User-agent: Bytespider Disallow: / # Allow legitimate search engines User-agent: Googlebot Allow: / User-agent: Bingbot Allow: /

Sample Technical Resources

Copy-paste resources your county IT team or vendor can implement immediately.

Sample Terms of Use Language

Add to your county website's Terms of Use page:

"Automated access to this website, including but not limited to scraping, crawling, data mining, or bulk downloading of records, is prohibited without prior written authorization from [County Name]. Use of bots, scripts, or automated tools to access, search, or download data from this site constitutes a violation of these Terms of Use and may be subject to legal action. This prohibition does not restrict individual, manual searches by members of the public for legitimate purposes."

What Makes These
Resources Different

Most discussions around public records focus on either:

  • Open access, or
  • Privacy restriction

Public Records Safety focuses on the operational middle ground:

  • Maintain public access
  • Protect system integrity
  • Reduce abuse from automation
  • Support real-world county constraints

This is not about shutting systems down—it’s about making them sustainable.

How to Use These Resources

Step 1: Awareness

Understand how automated access is affecting your system.

Step 2: Assessment

Evaluate your current exposure and vulnerabilities.

Step 3: Implementation

Apply basic protections and policy controls.

 

Step 4: Coordination

Work with vendors, abstractors, and stakeholders.

Step 5: Ongoing Monitoring

Adapt as technology and threats evolve.

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