County report card · New Jersey
Salem County, New Jersey
UncertainAudited 2026-08-24
Vendor (Simplifile) policy on automation has not been resolved
- Population
- 65,874
- Portal
- Assessor & Recorder
- Portal vendor
- Simplifile
What the audit checked
Four low-cost protections every online records portal can have. How we rate counties.
- robots.txtYes — permissive
- Terms of useNot checked
- Bot challengereCAPTCHA
- Owner notificationUnknown
Portal audited: salemcountyclerk.org/public-records-search/, taxrecords-nj.com/pub/cgi/prc6.cgi?district=1701&ms_user=ctb17
Doing well
- Technical barriers (recaptcha) that deter casual bulk access
Room to grow
- Expanding the robots.txt file to disallow automated scrapers
What to ask for
Three low-cost protections that residents in other counties have found valuable:
1. Adding robots.txt rules that disallow automated scrapers
2. Including a Terms of Use that prohibits automated access
3. Implementing a notification system that alerts residents when their records are accessed (per the AZ, FL, HI, IL, UT model)
The full playbook is What Counties Can Do.