It has recently been discovered that since 1996 the United States government had the Social Security numbers of up to 150,000 recipients of Agriculture Department grants on the Web – a problem which was only noticed and fixed (the numbers were taken down) on April 13, 2007. Free credit monitoring is being offered to those affected. The data from 32 other agencies was taken down April 17 as a precaution, Agriculture spokeswoman Terri Teuber said: "There is no evidence that this information has been misused. However, due to the potential that this information was downloaded prior to being removed, USDA will provide the additional monitoring service."