DECATUR - The U.S. Postal Service inspector general is investigating how personal information about 16 current employees and one retired employee from the Decatur Post Office got onto the World Wide Web.

Postal officials are saying little about the situation, but the employees are contacting attorneys and considering the possibility of filing a lawsuit.

Albert J. Wood, officer in charge of the Decatur Post Office, declined comment on the situation. He referred inquiries to Sue Litterly, Postal Service customer relations coordinator in Springfield.

"We believe this was the result of an accident," Litterly said Friday. "How (it happened) we don't know. We regret this occurred. We don't know anything else and won't until the investigation is done."

But the employees involved are certain they know how the situation developed, and they are angry about the circumstances and frustrated at the Postal Service's response.

"A postal supervisor had been downloading a file sharing program, Kazaa, onto a post office computer," said Ted Born, the retired letter carrier and spokesman for the affected employees. "It's against postal regulations to have that program on there.

"While the program was running, somebody downloaded 21 files on the 17 people that included their names, Social Security numbers and addresses. A postal employee in California found them online and notified us."

Born said despite Postal Service efforts to remove the information from the Web, "I'd bet somebody, someplace has those 17 names. How many times could they sell that information? Once something is on the Internet, it's there forever."

Though postal inspectors and the inspector general's office are supposed to be looking into the situation, the workers are not confident anything will be done about the supervisor who initiated the problem or that person's immediate superiors, Born said.

The National Association of Letter Carriers Local 317 filed a grievance with the Postal Service on behalf of the 17 affected people. Born said the Postal Service response was to offer each employee $10 to settle the problem.

"The Decatur Post Office will not police its own supervisors," Born said. "We want some people fired. We want justice done."

Born said the Postal Service told the workers if they didn't like the way the problem was being handled, they could sue.

"We're looking into that," he said.

Ron Ingram can be reached at ringram@;herald-review.com or 421-7973.