MILWAUKIE, Ore. - A USB drive that was dumped at a yard debris recycling company had a big surprise inside - old Oregon Department of Motor Vehicle records with tens of thousands of names, birth dates and home addresses.

An employee stumbled upon the USB drive and handed it over to the company's computer tech, Darryl Howe. 

"I thought well, I'll take a look at what's on it and maybe I'll find the owner that way and that's when I ran into a bit of a surprise," said Howe, who also teaches computer classes at his Molalla office.  "That kind of data should have never gone out to the public.  Problem is, it's a Pandora's Box.  It's out there and we're not going to put it back in the box so people need to be very careful about their information."

The data was from 1997. Back then, the DMV used to sell driver's license information to anyone who wanted it.  That means if you lived in Oregon in 1997 and had a license, it may be in the hands of criminals.

"DMV was required to sell mailing lists to companies that sold junk mail, essentially, and that stopped when the laws changed in 1998," said David House with Oregon DMV.

The state no longer sells that information but lists from the 1990s have been copied over and over and are still out there.  For identity thieves, the lists can be pure gold. 

According to police, they frequently find an old DMV list when conducting identity theft investigations.  They said it is just another reason to be sure to check your credit report once a year.