Stolen Yale Computers Contained 10,000 SSNs
According to the Yale Daily News, Yale University alerted 10,000
current and past students, as well as 200 staff, that two computers
stolen from the College Dean's Office July 17 contained their social
security numbers.
While the theft does expose the students and staff to potential
identify theft, campus representatives said that the computers were
password-protected, that thieves most likely stole the computers to
sell the hardware rather than the data, and stolen computers typically
have their hard drives scrubbed to conceal their origin.
“The University does not believe that this incident presents a
significant danger of identity theft because the crime was almost
certainly aimed at obtaining hardware for sale--not at exploiting the
data that were on the computers,” Yale added in a statement.
That said, Yale advised the staff and faculty with stolen records to
watch their bank accounts and credit reports and is working with those
individuals to answer their questions.
The Ivy League icon is not alone. The Educational Security Incidents
(ESI) website reports that during 2006, approximately 2.6 million data
records were reported to have been exposed at universities worldwide,
and those are just the number of reported incidents.
Of 2006's data breaches in 2006 at colleges and universities, The
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse reported that 20 percent of those breaches
were caused by stolen laptops and 17 percent from other stolen
computers. The remaining were the result of outside hackers (52
percent), insider malfeasance (2 percent), and human or software
incompetence (21 percent). The Clearinghouse reports that 67 breaches
in the education sector have occurred in 2007, so far.
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About the Author
David Kopf is a freelance technology writer and marketing consultant, and can be reached at [email protected].