Recently in Schools Category

Stanford University sent notification to tens of thousands of past and current employees that their personal information and identity is at risk because of a single stolen laptop that contained their personal information. The laptop was not encrypted.

A Stanford spokesman said that the stolen laptop contained personal information, including birth dates, social security numbers, and home addresses of people hired by the university before September 28th, 2007. According to the university this could be as many as 72,000 individuals.

Stanford has become the latest in a series of organizations to suffer a public relations nightmare - from Wells Fargo Bank to the US Department of Veterans Affairs – because of  a security breaches from a single stolen laptop. The sad fact here is that as the trustee of the personal information given to it, Stanford University has failed tens of thousands of people and put their financial identity at risk of being abused.

The University of Texas said it works hard to notify students about how to avoid identity theft, but the school put some of its own at risk.

The Personal information, including Social Security numbers of 22 current and former students, was posted and available to access on a university FTP site in late September.

All the students impacted were enrolled in a petroleum and geosystems class during the summers of 2001 and 2002.

The university took the files offline within hours after being notified by SSNBreach.org, but not before 22 students' Social Security numbers were exposed.

The university said there is an ongoing effort to get rid of using Social Security numbers except where they are needed.

The University of Iowa is warning 184 students and graduates that grade information and Social Security numbers were on a laptop stolen from a former teaching assistant. The laptop was stolen in September from the home of a former teaching assistant.

The laptop contains class records, including attendance, test scores and grades of 184 students who took graduate courses between 2002 and 2006. The Social Security numbers of 100 students are also on the laptop.

The Philosophy department chairman is mailing letters to affected students and accepting phone calls from those who are concerned about the incident.

In an apparent administrative error, the personal information of more than 600 Queens University students was emailed to other students. Queens University is located in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The information contained names, addresses, student IDs and social security numbers of the affected students.

University administrators have notified affected students by email, U.S. mail, and phone. Additionally, the university has contracted with a fraud and credit monitoring service for the next 12 months. Students will receive email alerts on changes to credit reports and insurance against identity theft.

Approximately 3,100 current and past Tennessee Tech University students were notified that some of their personal information may have been compromised.

On September 11, a problem in the way student bills are process resulted in some student's social security numbers and personal identification numbers appearing on the billing statements of other students.

The university has emails letters to affected students notifying them of the problem and outlining steps to help prevent possible fraud. Information about contacting credit reporting agencies and credit fraud alert services was mailed to them.

Details: http://www.tntech.edu/publicaffairs/security/

Source: "Technical Glitch Could Make Personal Data for Some TTU Students Vulnerable," Sept. 14, The Herald_Citizen.

Purdue University has notified 111 students that their personal information was inadvertently posted on the Internet. The information included the names and Social Security numbers of students in an Animal Sciences class that was held in the fall of 2004. The information was removed when it was discovered by a University Employee who reported the breach to Purdue's chief information security officer (CISO).

Source: The Indianapolis Star

A burglar broke into the IT department at Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Connecticut and stole computer equipment containing the personal information of several hundred past students.

The school notified victims in a letter sent August 3rd advising them to monitor their credit reports despite their claim that the data was encrypted.

Source: "Loomis Chaffee grads warned about potential identity theft after thieves steal school computer equipment," Aug. 23, Journal Inquirer.