Personal Details Of More Than 11,000 Former And Current University Of Florida Students Found On School Website
Personal information of more than 11,000 current and former University of Florida students was compromised after being posted on a school website, officials said Tuesday. The information, which included Social Security numbers, was put on a school tutoring site without a password. The site contained information about students at the school from 2003 to 2005 who expressed an interest in tutoring through the Office for Academic Support and Institutional Services.
In the wrong hands, Social Security numbers can be used to open credit card accounts, get government benefits or apply for a job. School officials emphasized that the site would not have been easy to find and they do not believe it was accessed by anyone outside the school.
Two former students who worked in the office were trying to create a database for tutoring and included for about 11,300 students. Only students from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences would have had information on the site. Letters were sent out Tuesday to students notifying them of the privacy breach, which was discovered last month during a routine school audit.
The school doesn’t have any evidence that the information was accessed but cannot be absolutely certain. The site has been taken down and the information has been removed from the university system.
Full press release regarding the incident can be found at http://privacy.ufl.edu/CLASBreach/CLASBreach.doc. For further questions, there is a UF’s Privacy Office Hotline at 866-876-HIPA.
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