The lawsuit filed by Vietnam Veterans of America charges that that a Defense Department website "is currently exposing private details about the military service of millions of veterans to anybody at all, anonymously, for any purpose."

The shoddy security measures allow virtually anyone to access sensitive data about veterans' records by typing in a name and date of birth, which are easily available on the internet. This gives "easy access to information about essentially all veterans or service members in the system" and thus violates the Federal Privacy Act, alleges the suit, which was filed last week in federal court in New York.

The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act website, which according to the Pentagon receives more than 2.3 billion searches a year, is mean to be used by authorized institutions like banks to confirm the active duty status that entitles service members to certain protections. 

Instead, the information is available to con artists and scammers who can use it to impersonate government or other officials and gain veterans' trust by discussing details of their service that only authorized organizations would have.