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Another School Exposes Private Information
DutchSter writes "In the wake of other schools announcing the theft of hardware containing sensitive student information, Miami University, of Oxford, Ohio, has announced that a file containing the name, Social Security number, the grade point average for the Fall 2002 semester, cumulative grade point average, and other related academic information, such as credit hours attempted that semester, for all 21,000 students who attended the Fall 2002 term has been available on a web server for the last three years. The discovery was made this week and the university is taking steps to deal with the fall-out sure to come."
Who are these ppl hiring as web admins??? Why are these files even on servers connected the net?? and hopefully first post
they figured this out after it showed up on Google? What ever happened to auditing what you have on the web.
-nick
companies/schools/etc will realise how important private data is, perhaps making people collecting such information legally responsible for protecting it, jail+fines (settlements are not allowed) might make them think twice before treating such private information lightly
I know this is a major breach of privacy/security, but I'm curious about what kinds of malicious things one could do with this information.
It seems to me that the only useful thing is the names/SSN combination.
Unless you could blackmail some poorly-achieving students by threatening to tell their parents their real marks?
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
...a concept so simple even Congress gets it. Too bad tech doesn't.
Data breach law
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Miami University... must be in Florida.
Oh, it's in Oxford... must be in England.
Bzzzzzt. BUT NO! It's in Ohio!
It must have taken a long time to come up with that combination of naming and placement.
My photolog
Three cheers for Business School's retarded cousin.
Muck Fiami!
Miami University...in Oxford...Ohio.
Met a girl from Miami that went to Oxford, and didn't like the song "Ohio." Seems a little less obscure, too. Yet, this school has 21,000 students? I mean...that's more than the real Oxford...the one that's not in Ohio, but has students from Miami...
the university will refund their tuition for the year.
that's what i would expect at a minimum. on top of other punishment for letting it happen in the first place.
this only reinforces the notion i have that there is absolutely no privacy. once your data is in someone elses hands (and all your data does in fact belong to them) you can kiss your privacy goodbye.
there is no recourse whatsoever. you cannot even sue them or ask for damages.
your personal data is obviously worth something to sell to third party "warehouses" but when they expose your data to the whole world, at that point it ceases to be worth anything...
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
Binghamton University in NY, just announced this week that 404 student names and ss numbers, as long as other sensative data was unsecured for months, it was only after a relative of a student pointed it out was the problem fixed...just in case you guys didn't know
This got me thinking. Email spammers and other naughty types run web bots to scour web sites for email addresses and similar personal information. How hard could it be to write software to search one's own web server for lists of SSNs or whatever, and alert a webmaster so it can be quickly taken down? Doesn't sound like it would be particularly difficult at all. A quick search untility to parse publicly-accessable pages could save a lot of bad publicity later, as happened in this case.
Andrew Lenahan http://www.starblind.com/
No school needs an SSN. For that matter just say no to giving it to anybody but the IRS and your financial institutions. Your doctor doesn't need it. The gas company doesn't need it. Cingular and Earthlink don't need it.
The city in Florida sprung up at the end of the 1800s, and adopted the name because they thought it meant something vaguely pleasant regarding water.
So if anybody's ignorant, it's actually the clowns in Florida.
Anything computer-related done by either government or schools tends to be incompetently executed and annoying, probably because when you need to deal with them, you need to deal with them - you're not a customer and if you don't like the way they do things, you can go fuck yourself. There's no reason for them to care about you, and it would be irrational for them to spend much money on giving you a better experience (well, up until the point that they get in trouble for leaking your private info on the web, that is). At least that's my theory to explain my experiences.
Don't drop the soap, Tommy!
Whoever setup the web server should be held responsible and embarassed in front of his parents. The parents of the students should also vote on whatever method they think is most appropriate.
Why don't they just use Windows? There would be no problems concerning information disclosure if they wouldn't meddle with open source crap.
I'm a grad from MU's CSA program, and I'm not very happy right now.
I blame the MIS students!!! Biz-kids think they can run a computer...
And yeah, the docs included my ssn...
I'm glad Bush passed that Bankruptcy reform
What happens when everyones id is stolen. Really fuck the econ, aye, you know, if you can't trust anyone id...
TFA
****
Dear Miami graduate student,
Miami University notified all members of the University community today that a report containing the names, grades, and social security numbers of all students who were enrolled at Miami in Fall 2002 was inadvertently placed in a file accessible through the Internet. At this point we have no evidence of illegal use of this information, but we are concerned and deeply regret that because of this action private and confidential student information was exposed.
You will find below the press release we have sent out that will give you more information about this incident.
I want to repeat that this affects only students attending Miami in Fall 2002. There is no threat to current students who were not on campus in Fall 2002. If you were on campus in Fall 2002, you will receive by early next week from Reid Christenberry, vice president for information technology, an email message providing you with a toll-free phone number, which will be staffed by trained investigators who are experienced in dealing with privacy issues. Later you will receive similar, written notification from Miami with the toll-free phone number and additional information about actions you can take if you are concerned about possible identity theft.
If you were on campus in Fall 2002 and do not receive an email early next week, please let us know by emailing us at mailto:privacyhelp@muohio.edu>privacyhelp@muohio.e du
Again, we deeply regret that this information was made accessible. We will keep you informed of the actions we are taking to protect current students and alumni.
Richard Nault
Vice President for Student Affairs
14 September 2005
MIAMI NOTIFYING STUDENTS, ALUMNI OF PRIVACY BREACH
OXFORD, Ohio - Miami University is notifying all students who attended Miami during the fall 2002 semester that a report containing their names, Social Security numbers and grades had been inadvertently placed in a file accessible through the Internet. University officials said that at this point they have no evidence of illegal use of the information, which included data on the 21,762 students enrolled on all Miami campuses in fall 2002. No other students were affected. Officials say the information was in an isolated area of the university's network, in a file assigned to a now-retired faculty member, and thus avoided detection until this week when an alumna told Miami she had discovered the file after entering her name in a search engine.
"Nevertheless, private and confidential information was exposed, and we deeply regret the incident. We have removed the file and are writing the students and alumni to apologize. We also are taking steps to rectify the problem and to avoid a similar instance in the future," said J. Reid Christenberry, Miami's vice president for information technology.
The university is writing a letter to all those affected, many of whom have now graduated, directing them to a toll-free number that will be staffed by trained investigators who are experienced in dealing with privacy issues. Miami has established a web page, www.muohio.edu/privacyhelp, with additional information. Individuals who want to contact the university about the situation can use a special email address, privacyhelp@muohio.edu, or call Miami at (513) 529-0438.
"We are doing all we can to reach those whose information was included and to guide them through actions to reduce risk," said Christenberry. The report was a standard grade
PWND!!!
usually the tech people working for universities really really don't know what they're doing. at least this is so in my university (somewhere in the midwest).
they're so clueless, it's scary..
the way they fix things is to restart and hope the problem won't appear again. It's not windows servers what I'm talking about.
also, on windows production server, they had icq, msn and all kind of crap installed including adware.
accounts that access lots of your information are not too carefully guarded and almost anybody working there could get your social security, bank accounts, bank guarantee letter (for I20 letters), grades, even password for their web interface...
scary stuff
...and how was it being used? Was the file being used by admissions? Did anyone with access to the file have write permission? And does this mean that anyone in that class of students could have easily changed their records? Yes, this is a breach of privacy, but it might have also been an oportunity for some unethical clod.
It's the Future of Rock & Roll!
I am a sophomore at Miami (and yes we were a university before Florida was a state). Frankly it doesn't come as a surprise, IT around here is nothing to brag about. Although making /. that's what really got me...
A campus wide email was sent out...looking a bit like this:
"Dear Miami student,
Miami University is notifying all members of the University community today that a report containing the names, grades, and social security numbers of all students who were enrolled at Miami in Fall 2002 was inadvertently placed in a file accessible through the Internet. At this point we have no evidence of illegal use of this information, but we are concerned and deeply regret that because of this action private and confidential student information was exposed.
You will find below the press release we are sending out that will give you more information about this incident.
I want to repeat that this affects only students attending Miami in Fall 2002. There is no threat to current students who were not on campus in Fall 2002. If you were on campus in Fall 2002, you will receive by early next week from Reid Christenberry, vice president for information technology, an email message providing you with a toll-free phone number, which will be staffed by trained investigators who are experienced in dealing with privacy issues. Later you will receive similar, written notification from Miami with the toll-free phone number and additional information about actions you can take if you are concerned about possible identity theft.
Again, we deeply regret that this information was made accessible. We will keep you informed of the actions we are taking to protect current students and alumni.
Richard Nault
Vice President for Student Affairs"
Ba dum dum:-).
It is basically one of those colleges that wants to look like an Ivy League school but it is just a one big glorified party, where rich parents can send their spoiled kids to study business and literature.
By the way, I still don't get their name. It is not in the freakin' Miami and certainly not anywhere near (geographically and academically) U of Oxford, England.
Yeah, well what were the permissions on that file
chmod 777 ssnFile
Sue the hell out of the person who discovered the security hole. That will show em.
Hacker Media
Last year, UConn, my college, had a privacy breach where lots of SSN's were leaked. This year, they've made a committee to figure out ways in which they can remove SSN's from as many internal processes as possible.
Last year, a student's ID was their SSN. Now, it's an ID assigned by our peoplesoft system. If i forget my ID at, oh say, the campus book store *shudder*, they can't look it up w/ my social. Like I said, good things can sometimes come out of these events.
Color me sudo...
Just because it was on a webserver doesn't mean it was easy to find. Unless your a concerned student who searches for your name and the first group or two of your SSN.
Restrict what's in your webspace!
What I'd be concerned about is did the "now retired faculty member" know the directory where they put the file was on a public server or was the file put there and then someone did a chmod 755 on the dir, possibly after they retired by the replacement who didn't know any better. The school I'm at has school.edu/dept/whatevertheywant I know some departments use it for public and private storage, yes bad idea, with password protected files&dirs. If the same happened there it's possible someone made a location public without checking the contents of all the sub dirs. I've heard of this happening too many times, schools need to have clearly labeled dedicated internal network storage and separate webspace. Once they start getting mixed up there's the chance a file will accidentally get copied or moved to the wrong place for all to see. The problem is "public" and "private" are too close when listed alphabetically. If those labels are used it's too easy for someone using a windows interface to accidentally drag&drop something to the wrong location when it looks like:
~admissions_office
lunch_menus
office_supplies
private
public
schedules
warez(maybe not)
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
Alright, My school is famous now! Quite a suprise when I saw Miami on Slashdot. Sadly its just an embarrassment. But yea, we are a relatively big school considering that alot of people haven't heard of us. Basically from what I heard prior to coming here we are known for being extremely preppy and having an endless supply of beautiful ladies :)
Over the Summer, my school's district replaced their old SIS (Student Information System) with "SchoolMAX", designed by Maximus. After talking to a guidance counselor regarding schedule modifications, I noticed her log in to the new system - I noticed it required 4 credentials, one which the counselor left blank, and I made a mental note to Google the name of the system for more info on it for curiosity sake. The counselor printed me my new schedule, right from the web page. Sweet, thanks for doing the work for me - the URL was on the bottom of the sheet. I got home, hopped on the web, and keyed in the URL. The credentials required were school district, operator ID, password, and screen ID. Screen ID was what the counselor had left blank, so I was down to 3. I figured school district would be available online - a quick Google search confirmed this, and I was down to 2 fields remaining. There doesn't seem to be any real security on the site, and I predict a simple brute force or something more practical such as social engineering would enable anyone to an entire district worth of information.
A former student googled for his/her name and it found the file.
Interesting to know. I've got many friends that go to Miami University up in Oxford, OH. For those not in the know, it is a division 1 school, and just a little bith north of Cincinnati, OH. The city Oxford, OH is just a college city. Lovely campus, though the students have a general stigma of being uptight and preppy. I'd say 90% or more are upper-middle class white kids. Their official website, is www.muohio.edu.
I have bad karma
Oxford, OH.
Strangely enough, I grew up not far from Oxford, OH. Funny to see this place mentioned on Slashdot. Even more hilarious to see it on Slashdot due to the actions of some irresponsible people!
It seems to me that there is an opening in the market here for a reliable intermediate service that attracts clients (universities, hospitals, firms) by outsourcing the privacy issue and attracts users (students, patients, et cetera) by putting a high premium on security. Coupled with lobbying for legislation on this issue, and there is a possible business opportunity. Certainly as a user I would prefer ONE widely respected (and carefully monitored) service to have my information, and allow other vendors only to know the id number of my account with the respected service (and validate that authorization by letting the service know to whom I had granted this information). Or, is there something like this?
I understand that it is the easy thing to do but with all the compromises of data recently it seems that the inconveinience of unique numbers for different institutions would be a valid approach. Data theft is like gambling. In Vegas you can't lose what you don't bet. On the web you can't have data compromised if you don't put it on the network.
In constrast to most /. types, I have pretty much given up on "privacy" in this sense. We live in a world that is becoming more and more connected and wired every day. Within that context, it becomes more and more possible for people to obtain information about one another. Perhaps we should be thinking more about how to embrace this reality rather than fruitlessly attempting to resist it. Just a thought...
How many schools have info like this (or worse) posted on some forgotten webpage?
Maybe the IT departments of schools should look into hiring quality people for their systems instead of leaving it up to educators with no real-life experience or student staff that rotate every semester.
You know their motto ... it is the "Show Me" state!
I agree, perhaps public humiliation would be best in this case. While it won't physically harm the individual(s) responsible for this lapse, it will discipline them and it will provide an example for others. Perhaps the best form of humiliation would be genital exposure. Make these people walk around the campus for a day, penis hanging out.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
A lot of universities have not-well-advertised public ftp servers that are used for transferring large files, generally with scripts that scrub things that have been around for more than a day to avoid turning into warez servers. I know of one multi-campus institution where an employee at one campus and their counterpart at another campus agreed to use this method to transfer a list of all currently enrolled students at one of the campuses. This included phone numbers, addresses, and student ID numbers, which were mostly SSNs, because that was the default and most students didn't know to ask for a different ID number. Once the transfer was complete and they discovered they could not delete files from this server, they called support, and it was gone in under 5 minutes. They'd already had it drilled into their heads how bad it would be if such a list got out, but no procedure for securely transferring very large files had been established, and they did not have the technical expertise to establish one themselves.
I imagine this happens a lot, especially at research institutions whose scientists need to be able to receive large amounts of data from collaborators without having to set up accounts for them.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
The computer-illiterate bureaucrat who runs the show hires IT consultants to design and implement any major projects, an old-school geek is the senior sysadmin, and recent college graduates do the dirty work.
For free identity theft monitoring, please send your name, social security number, birth date, credit card numbers with expiration dates, and address to protectmyidentity@gmail.com. We will take care of your credit record for you and guarantee that you will never have to worry about your good credit record ever again.
You must give your SSN to Federal, State, and Local governments only when there is a law that requires it. The act also says the government agency MUST inform you at the time of collection whether giving your SSN is required or optional, cite the law that requires it, and explain what happens if you don't give it.
If you do not see a privacy act notice on government paperwork, then don't give your SSN. It's hard to say no, and many govt workers are completely ignorant of the law, but you've got to take a stand.
Non-government entities can ask you for your SSN for any reason or no reason, but you don't have to give it to them. If a company says they have to have it, be prepared to take your business elsewhere.
So, is Miami of Ohio a government entity? Many universities are because they are state funded or created by an act of state law or consitution. If so, demand that privacy act notice. If not, take your money somewhere else.
I doubt any school would deny you admission because you refuse to give your ssn. What do they do for the foreign students?
You'll never know what you can do without giving out (your SSN) until you stop giving in.
Things I've done without giving out my SSN: got real phone service, got satelite TV, been to the doctor/hospital, got medical insurance, got internet service, got married. Yeah sure, I wasn't able to get that extra 10% off at Pier One by signing up for a credit card. So what!
Ohio is in the northeast you idiot. It's the armpit of the northeast.
Dear Miami student,
Miami University is notifying all members of the University community today that a report containing the names, grades, and social security numbers of all students who were enrolled at Miami in Fall 2002 was inadvertently placed in a file accessible through the Internet. At this point we have no evidence of illegal use of this information, but we are concerned and deeply regret that because of this action private and confidential student information was exposed.
You will find below the press release we are sending out that will give you more information about this incident.
I want to repeat that this affects only students attending Miami in Fall 2002. There is no threat to current students who were not on campus in Fall 2002. If you were on campus in Fall 2002, you will receive by early next week from Reid Christenberry, vice president for information technology, an email message providing you with a toll-free phone number, which will be staffed by trained investigators who are experienced in dealing with privacy issues. Later you will receive similar, written notification from Miami with the toll-free phone number and additional information about actions you can take if you are concerned about possible identity theft.
If you were on campus in Fall 2002 and do not receive an email early next week, please let us know by emailing us at <<removed>>
Again, we deeply regret that this information was made accessible. We will keep you informed of the actions we are taking to protect current students and alumni.
Richard Nault
Vice President for Student Affairs
Yeah, that makes me feel better.
For being French, you speak wonderful English.
The funny thing about this is that it wouldn't have *mattered* 20 years ago. We live in a different world now, and it's going to take a while for people to understand it.
Think about the stereotypical absent-minded professor. Someone gives him a file of students' academic info, and like everything else, he misplaces it.
Okay -- 20 years ago, worst case scenario: the file is left out in plain view on his desk in an unlocked office, and a student nicks it. The student shows his friends, word gets out, and the student gets in trouble. Some students are upset about the privacy violation.
Now fast-forward to today, and the same innocuous, absent-minded professor can misplace a file and cause a DISASTER. Surprise, the whole world can see it! Nobody needed to break into his office, nobody needed to even enter the school, and they can get the file, just because he mixed up the X: drive (teacher fileserv) with the W: drive (public webserver), or something like that.
I'm no Luddite -- heck, I'm a web developer, and I'm the first to say that the benefits of the internet are incredible -- but it's a dangerous and powerful tool that doesn't get the respect it deserves... most users out there are kinda like teenagers learning to drive tractor trailors. Or it's like everyone's using these new ballpoint pens that also shoot out a lethal dart if you twist the handle.
Why does the school have the SSN's of all the students? They can't all be getting financial aid, or be employed by the school.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
What on earth are social security numbers doing in a school computer. Don't they know that since last year it has become illegal to use social security number for student identification? Man... I bet someone is going to sue the heck out of that school and for good reason.
Anyone got the torrent?
Telltale Games: Bone, Sam and Max
Back then we carried around sheets of paper with our information. Some used a redundancy method known as "carbon copy" - in which the user would write once and the data would be recorded in many places.
Though I had to physically walk miles to track down professors without watches, the data was always securely stored in the back pocket of my jeans or stuffed into my backpack.
Best of all, we relied upon social engineering security and things like locked wooden file cabinets. The security team was staffed by should-have-already-retired women who hated all people and wore too-tight pastel colored polyester blouses and shirts. But nothing got past them.
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
Maybe rather than trying to conceal this sort of information, we should be working to make it useless.
I'm currently a student at the University of Maryland, and our school uses the SSN for EVERYTHING. It's absolutely sickening because the administration makes these grand claims about moving away from the SSN for student security, but to get even the most menial tasks accomplished on campus, you have to use your SSN. Worst of all, I worked with a professor on campus to inquire as to their data collection practices under the Maryland Public Information Act, and we essentially discovered that they have absolutely no data security system in place whatsoever. Our swipe cards, which are used for everyhting from getting into a building to buying a meal-- also contain our SSNs in the magnetic strip.
You'd think this would be enough information to cause a massive overhaul of a woefully insecure system, right? Wrong, the school newspaper won't even print a story about it because they don't understand the inherent risk in all of this.
http://privacyumd.blogspot.com/ to learn more about the status of this issue at UMD
Score:1, Troll
Someone didn't get the 'excuse my french' joke.
What a coincidence, that is exactly what I am doing. Just send me your name, SSN, address, date of birth, mother's maiden name and I can make it all pretty useless for you ;)
Which is to whom I was refering!
In Sweden, both grades and the closest equivalent of SSN is public. Just call the school that gave out the grade and they'll tell you, just contact the right place and they'll tell you the personal number. I'd have assumed that is the case everywhere else too?
I don't see the problem with that, really. It's not like that will give you any useful information, at best you can check if a person lied about his grade. Is the problem that it's avaible on the internet?
The information released also included demographics. I've obtained the information and masked off the personally identifying information so I could show the sort of demographic information made available:
... Gender Dress ...
... Male, Khaki shorts, white T-shirt, ball cap
... Female, Khaki shorts, white T-shirt, ball cap with pony tail pulled through
... Male, Khaki shorts, white T-shirt, ball cap
... Female, Khaki shorts, white T-shirt, ball cap with pony tail pulled through
... Male, Khaki shorts, white T-shirt, ball cap
... Male, Khaki shorts, white T-shirt, ball cap
... Female, Khaki shorts, white T-shirt, ball cap with pony tail pulled through
... Female, Khaki shorts, white T-shirt, ball cap with pony tail pulled through
... Male, Khaki shorts, white T-shirt, ball cap
... Female, Khaki shorts, white T-shirt, ball cap with pony tail pulled through
(if you've been there, you'll understand)
Where's the torrent?
What are the odds that these schools are running SCT Banner and using IIS?
Pretty damned good. Banner in itself is an ungainly beast, an overlay on top of an Oracle database. But they host the web components on IIS which is a guaranteed point of failure.
I've loathed IIS and MS-SQL ever since I was exposed to LAMP. But universities decided their I.T. shops couldn't produce a good product so they got snowed by the SCT folks. Disgusting I tell you.
. . . unfortunate incidents are blown out of proportion or even engineered by the IT establishment at these colleges as a ploy for more authority and better funding. Whether or not that's the case, it'll certainly be the result.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
To start out, i work in a security division of a credit card company. under the patriot act if a credit card company asks for your ssn you must give it to them to validate yourself as a citizan. If you dont give it to us, we can close your account. even if you dont give it to me, i can pull it up using FastData web or Accurent using just your address or phone number, along with anyone else that has ever lived there or had that phone number. so next time you call a credit card company at least, just give it to us, we have it anyways. stop being such a pain in my ass. and if you dont and we close your account its your own damn fault.
Why does everyone refer to a University as "School"?
...when your HR department is told "all potential candidates MUST have MCSEs!" You end up with a bunch of morons who can barely SPELL "NT", let alone administer any machines.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
"It is a good school. It also was voted by Playboy a few years in a row "
Now that sounds really valuable... Not.
I kind of doubt that these people would have thought of that.
Go to myspace.com and look for people who attended that school during the affected year. If you come up with any firstname+lastname combos (firstname in profile, lastname in comments or something - passive social engineering by observation, my favorite kind), give the ol' search skills a whirl.
I found a few, but I think I'll leave you guys to do the detective work yourselves. >:D
[an error occured while processing this directive]
I think it's interesting that Miami doesn't know if this data was accessed by unauthorized people.
All they'd have to do was grep through their web server access logs and look at ips. There's a small, but important, possibility that no one ever accessed this file other than the professor. Or at least, they'd know ips for those who had accessed the file.
Presumably, they're not keeping logs this long.
I'll say it again:
/path_to_place_trustedadmin_can_read/sensitivedata .tar.gpg"
tar -cf - sensitivedata| \
gpg -e -r trustedadmin@theotherplace.edu| \
ssh myaccount@theotherplace.edu "cat >
It was removed and Google was informed by an automatic process to re-archive; there was no cache, but the data was searchable for the day it was found. The evening it was found it was no longer searchable. Internet Archive and the like don't archive this particular type of content.
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
...we here at Miami have been phasing out Social Security Numbers for some time.
Everything now works with a "Banner number," which begins with a +0, and which no one can remember.
However, the fact that the marketing department, of all people, is allowed to have access to all our information (as far as I'm concerned, +number is just as bad as ssn), just by asking for it is really, really distrubing.
I hope they did due dilligence and removed all access through google cache and the wayback machine. I realise that the SSNs are already out in the wild, but it would do no one any good to have their SSN permanently available in a history cache somewhere.
Time passed, and a few years ago Quicken bought them up, and rolled their system into Quicken's bill payment system. My stuff continued to work just fine, I was happy with the service. Time passed, and I was trying to find a way to do my bills online while maintaining an electronic transaction register without requiring double entry (bad, bad thing - can cause massive problems if you screw up) - and I wanted to use this system under Linux. I looked into various products, the closest "best" product being GNUCash - but they still don't have the EFT section done (and likely never will - banks, for some reason, are loathe to help them set this up, but have no problem with large companies doing it). So, I stuck with Quicken, and it was the one reason I still had a Windows system running.
Time passed, and recently I had to get a new checking account for reasons I won't go into here - suffice to say, it was a necessary thing I had to do. I got the new account, but then when I went to set it up in Quicken, the whole process fell over. Some of my bills didn't get paid (Quicken initially covered them), I went through a long process with them. After about two weeks, here is what I found out:
They were assumming that the ID they had on file for me was my SSN. It wasn't. They queried the bank for the account number I gave them, sent the ID number as my SSN to the bank to verify, and of course, it didn't match, so the whole thing was denied. After a few rounds of this, with them scratching their heads, I finally heard from someone who was very suspicious of what was happenning - they were required by some section of the PATRIOT Act for me to give them my SSN. Mind you, this was during the same time period that many companies (like the school in the article) were have credit card accounts stolen and other ID information stolen. I told them I wasn't going to give it to them, and I had never given it to them - because oh-so-long ago I had foreseen this very situation happenning, and I was going to do everything I could to prevent it from happenning to me (for this reason, my health insurance company doesn't have my real SSN, either - and I use different IDs between my dentist and my doctor).
Furthermore, I couldn't understand why they all of a sudden didn't trust my info when I could clearly show my old account was something I had with them for so long, working just fine. I guess customer loyalty means nothing anymore - what a sad situation that is. They pleaded and wheedled with me to just give them the ID, that was all they needed...
I told them to go to hell and closed my account - I value my privacy on my ID too much. Of course, with your revelation, they probably had the means to get it anyhow (I, of course, had to give my SSN out to get my mortgage at my current address) - so how in the hell is it supposed to be secure, I don't know, if anyone with access to those systems can get it with an address. I hate this world, this world without privacy for only some (but if you have enough money and power, no one can bother you) - but couple that with the ability for nearly anyone with the time and patience to do it, and they can assume your identity and fuck your life up for years - how is this supposed to be a good thing? Grrr...
Anyhow, I am no longer with Quicken, no longer with Checkfree - I do things the old fashioned way with a checkbook and stamps. I still use my Quicken software as a check/transaction register - but one day that will be phased out and I can drop kick Windows to the curb (well, maybe I will keep it around for some game playing or something). You know something, though? It is actually better this way...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Central IT is a strongpoint here. Users are the problem, as they are everywhere. This server was run by the department, not by central IT.
FYI Miami is a linux shop through and through. Central IT is highly trained, has upwards of 200 employees, and this is reflected by the services they offer.
I am a recent grad, was enrolled in 2002 in the Business school, and my rather unique name was not searchable (i.e. when searching for my name only a few results ever come up, none of which were at Miami (except for one for being on the waterski team.)
BTW, since sometime between 2002 and 2003 they stopped using SSNs and went to a random sequential number system to identify students, to keep things like this from happening. This just went down before it was widely taught against.
It was 755, and the file hadn't been noticed for three years; grades and records are stored in a database on secured servers somewhere. These records were a report run from that database to enable the department chair to make decisions, probably on things like class force-adds.
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
a few years ago in college (who's name you'd recognize and is generally regarded very highly technically) I was googling my name and came across a document some MBA student put in the wrong place with 100's-1000's of names and SSN's... I told them and they removed it...I think it was mainly caused by a poor understanding of which filesystems were public and which were private...
.... arithmetic underflow....
business students--
anyway it happens everywhere...
There is no evidence that anybody ever used this information for unauthorized purposes. Some professor left the grade report in an exposed directory on a web server. Instead of taking the server down and forgeting about the incident (like 9 out of 10 IT departments would have) the University sent letters to all of the potentially affected parties. I don't even believe that OH has a CA style law requiring such disclosure. I commend them for their honesty.
The suggestion that the University should have refunded $20K to all of its 2002 students because its theoretically possible that somebody might have gotten their information is positively bizzare.
I believe that most of the Miami girls are beautiful with or without make-up. I left Miami for summer break and realized that I sorely missed flirting with cute women.
Miami is a quaint little city. Some retirees prefer to retire somewhere quiet and that's what Miami is. Just because some are rich does not imply beautiful people. The rich CAN develop a nurturing environment for kids. Just don't retire near the frats. We can be very noisy.
I'm on the faculty of another small liberal arts school. I don't know why SSNs were passed around in this case, but other sensitive information is routinely shared among "officers of the college" (faculty, administrators, academic staff) for some purposes. For example, when our school evaluates candidates for Phi Beta Kappa--which, incidentally, would be my guess for how this professor had the information at Miami--quite a lot of people need to see transcript information. We also produce an anonymized version of the information for student members of the chapter. We try to secure the information carefully--keeping electronic versions protected, shredding the paper. The Miami violation is clearly egregious. I mention our circumstances to explain why professors sometimes have access to this kind of information about students.