County report card · South Carolina
Beaufort County, South Carolina
Vendor (Aumentum / Thomson Reuters) policy on automation has not been resolved
- Population
- 201,775
- Portal
- Assessor
- Portal vendor
- Aumentum / Thomson Reuters
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 challengeNone detected
- Owner notificationUnknown
Portal audited: sc-beaufort.publicaccessnow.com/, gis.beaufortcountysc.gov/publicmapping/, www.beaufortcountysc.gov/register-of-deeds/index.html, www.beaufortcountytreasurer.com/tax-bill-lookup
Doing well
No protections against automated access were found in this audit.
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.