INCINNATI, Oct. 12 — Before the Internet, public records were essentially private because of their obscurity — they sat gathering dust in courthouses across the land. Now governments are examining what information should be made public on the World Wide Web and whether different rules should apply to electronic documents.

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Since the late 1990's, courts have posted records online to manage cases more efficiently and provide easier access. But complaints have followed.

Crime victims, jurors and witnesses fear that assailants can easily identify and find them. Others worry about identity theft. Former inmates want their pasts hidden, not publicized. Divorced couples grumble that their neighbors now know their business.

Jim Moehring knows firsthand the pros and cons of making public court records available online.

A general manager at Cincinnati's hockey arena, Mr. Moehring has used the Hamilton County court's Web site to check out potential employees. He has even turned away a few because of what he found.

But someone used the site to get Mr. Moehring's Social Security number and other personal details from a 1996 traffic ticket, opening seven credit cards in his name and charging $11,000.

"It was absolutely terrifying," Mr. Moehring said. "I got smoked in a bad way. The information is way too accessible."

Though officials knew records would be made more available, "there was an underestimation of the impact that was going to have on the individuals whose documents now were online," said John Bessey, a Franklin County judge and chairman of the Ohio Supreme Court's technology committee.

This month, a coalition that includes the National Center for State Courts in Williamsburg, Va., is to recommend guidelines for states drafting online policies.

The federal court system decided last year that documents in civil and bankruptcy cases, but not criminal cases, should be available electronically without personal information like Social Security numbers, birth dates and names of minors.

The Florida Supreme Court is considering a moratorium on online court records while lawmakers review a 2000 Florida law that requires courts to post by 2006 scanned images of all official records.

Other states, including Ohio, New York, Arizona and Wisconsin, have task forces studying the issue. But some fear lawmakers might use the Internet as an excuse to deny the public access to information off-line.

"I'm deeply suspicious of anyone tinkering with open records laws because they're usually doing it for a specific self-serving reason," said Timothy Smith, director for the Ohio Center for Privacy and the First Amendment at Kent State University. The better solution, he said, would be to limit the amount of personal information that many public documents require.

Randal Bloch, a divorce lawyer in Cincinnati, often hears complaints about privacy from her female clients. Most are concerned, Ms. Bloch said, that criminals may surf the Web for names and ages of children, their addresses and the layouts of their houses.

She now asks judges to prohibit her clients' cases from being posted on the Internet.

"People don't have good intentions, and the county is laying a road map for them," Ms. Bloch said. "It goes beyond stolen identity. It speaks to personal safety."