July 22, 2008
Social Security Numbers of U. of Maryland Students Were Exposed
About 24,000 students at the University of Maryland are at risk of having their identities stolen.
On July 1, the university’s Department of Transportation Services sent all students registered for upcoming fall classes parking brochures. Affixed to the brochures were mailing labels that contained student’s Social Security numbers, although the numbers were not identified as such. The numbers were inadvertently put on the mailing labels, according to a university Web site.
J. David Allen, director of the transportation department, apologized for the security breach in a Thursday e-mail message to registered students.
“We are taking aggressive steps to ensure that this does not happen again,” the message read. “We strongly recommend that you take appropriate precautions to mask, black out, or destroy this document after use.”
The message also recommends that students place a 90-day fraud alert on their consumer credit files and also consider placing a security freeze on the files. The university is offering to foot the bill for students who want a year of credit monitoring from Equifax. No student has had his or her identity stolen as a result of the incident, according to a university spokeswoman.—Andrea L. Foster
Posted on Tuesday July 22, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
Commenting is closed for this article.
Previous: Next-Generation Internet Effort Gets More Federal Money
Next: Medical Version of Wikipedia, With Universities' Help, Gets Ready to Go Live
Although this is a major error for the Transportation Department, they are being very proactive about it according to their web site.
As a student, I’m glad I’ve procrastinated about registering for the Fall semester since those students who have not registered yet were not affected.
— James Jul 23, 10:17 AM #
I don’t know about UM, but we’ve been on a crusade for years to eliminate SSNs from all possible records and all student documents. It’s Olympic-quality stupid for this to have happened. Someone who should not have access to these numbers at all made a big mistake.
— Al Jul 23, 10:38 AM #
How do you place a “90-day fraud alert” on your credit records? This would be a useful thing to know…
— Larry Gillis Jul 24, 06:50 AM #