June 20, 2007
A Flash Drive's Excellent Adventure
Blair Sterba-Boatwright, chairman of the mathematics department at Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi, recently misplaced a flash drive that may have contained the Social Security numbers of many of the university’s students.
Under normal circumstances, the professor might have scoured his office or rifled through the papers on his desk at home. But this time, finding the flash drive will be a bit trickier: The device, it seems, is somewhere in Madagascar.
According to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Mr. Sterba-Boatwright lost the drive at some point during a two-week vacation on the African island. Campus officials say it’s not clear whether the professor violated university policy by taking the device on a personal trip, but they have gone ahead and notified the students whose personal information may have been exposed. —Brock Read
Comments
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I hope no one blames the professor here, because he shouldn’t have had to manage social security numbers in the first place. Despite all the talk of replacing SSNs with university-centric ID numbers, progress has been painfully and inexcusably slow nationwide. From what I have seen, student records show SSNs even after the switch at some universities.
— DLS Jun 20, 05:06 PM #
Pass the blame game. At this point in time any individual who loses a device containing sensitive information, just plain messed up. They can’t blame anyone other than themselves and anyone who would attempts to pass blame is a coward, at least my mind. I am glad this professor was responsible enough to admit this mishap so the affected people could be notified. In reality, just about everyone in America has had their identity compromised and the media makes a needlessly big deal out of the whole issue. Rare is the person who out of the millions compromised, actually suffers a loss. We should all be careful, but accidents happen to everyone.
— SW Jun 21, 05:49 AM #
Reply to DLS.
Yes the professor should be blamed. Why did he take this information to Madagascar? What was he going to do with American SS#‘s there. Should have cleaned up the flash drive before he made the trip. But, yes he was responsible enough to admit this mishap.
— Steve Jun 21, 09:38 AM #
This is part of a very painful learning process for all of us. Identity theft is a huge and growing problem. Flash drives are very convenient but easily misplaced. Blair is a very conscientious faculty member and administrator but should be more aware of the consequences of sensitive data handling – sure bet he is now. Let’s all learn from this. Give him lots of credit for not hiding the situation.
— Robert Jun 21, 12:19 PM #
This situation just further illustrates how cavalier some institutions behave with student identity information. Of course the math professor and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi should be blamed. There is absolutely no reason why a flash drive with student social security numbers should have been taken overseas to begin with. And why in the world did Texas A&M-Corpus Christi give this professor access to the numbers in the first place?
This hurts all of us in higher education. If we want the public’s support and trust, we must show we deserve their support and trust. This incident shows the public that this math professor and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi are not trustworthy and do not deserve support, until they have proven they have systems in place to prevent anything like this from ever happening again.
— JPS Jun 21, 12:25 PM #