Saturday, October 13, 2007
CMU tells 400 students of possible theft of personal data
Post Gazette: "Carnegie Mellon University has begun notifying about 400 of its students whose Social Security numbers may have been compromised by a laptop computer theft from a classroom building."
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3 comments:
Now I heard about this laptop and possible identity theft a couple weeks ago before it was officially released to the press and it really pissed me off. I read up on it and realized that I was in no danger but the universities’ handling of it simply appalled me. The concept that they had compromised 400 people’s social security numbers and did not notify them for a month is just ridiculous. The further fact that the university refused to pay for credit monitoring for those 400 students is just a slap in the face. Really they screwed up by having that information somewhere where it could be compromised and then didn’t admit to it for a month, and now are refusing to make sure no bad comes of it. They really are flexing the students have no real power card aren’t they?
It annoys me that we have to function with Social Security numbers so much in college in the first place. I realize that we have this other ID number, but it seems like that's rarely the number they're looking for. I don't like the idea of personal data that could be used for serious theft being tossed around on forms, especially electronically. I like to think I can trust people, but obviously this laptop theft proves that we all need to be more careful about where we keep personal data and with whom. And yeah, it is frustrating, because you don't expect the university to be so careless of your protection or refuse the kind of response that would actually help.
i heard about this through the grapevine weeks ago... and theyre only letting student know that they SSNs were leaked now?
whats worse, this was a CS professor's laptop, why would he store personal data on an unsecure harddrive when there's how many network servers availabale for him to use?
Happy Internet Security Month!
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