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What Can I Do About Poorly Handled Data Theft?
Embarrassed UTA Alumnus writes "My former college, the University of Texas at Arlington, just made the now-all-to-common announcement that student data — including Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grades, and other information — were on several recently stolen personal computers. The computers were from the home of a Computer Science lecturer, and perhaps more worrisome was the fact that they were the only stolen items in the incident. I had the displeasure of taking one of the lecturer's courses a few years ago, and anyone from his courses since the year 2000 is affected. In response, UTA is providing free 90-day 'fraud monitoring' (not full credit reports), and no disciplinary action has been taken against the lecturer who lost the data."
In situations like this, what can a student do when a large institution loses critical private information, makes only a token effort to fix the problem, and lets the people involved continue in practices that may make a similar, or more serious breach occur in the future?
"The data was not encrypted. The lecturer in question is one of the CS faculty at UTA who all conveniently guarded one another, so I guess I shouldn't expect more from him in that area. More importantly though, no one should have had this data on their personal computers, and Social Security numbers should not have been included at all. Furthermore, even without the concern of theft, I seriously question the need for years-old private student data. It is suspicious at the very least.
The UTA PR department is already trying to bury the issue with vague claims of new efforts to hire a system-wide CIO who would be responsible for all 15 UT system campuses. The lecturer in question responded to the student newspaper with 'no comment' each time they attempt to interview him.
I feel like the university should do more, including seeking disciplinary action against all involved. What can I do, short of keeping an eye on my credit and letting the school get away with yet another blunder?"
The UTA PR department is already trying to bury the issue with vague claims of new efforts to hire a system-wide CIO who would be responsible for all 15 UT system campuses. The lecturer in question responded to the student newspaper with 'no comment' each time they attempt to interview him.
I feel like the university should do more, including seeking disciplinary action against all involved. What can I do, short of keeping an eye on my credit and letting the school get away with yet another blunder?"
Give them fake info when you sign up to college. As an added bonus, you'll never have to pay off that student loan.
Only downside is eventually having to explain the diploma in the name of "Nospamplease Fuckoff" proudly displayed on your wall.
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Um, Joe Random PHd Professor should only need your name and student ID number, which shouldn't be your SSN. I'd be more ticked off that the university was handing out your SSN to all the professors of the classes that you've taken. I wouldn't trust my major field advisor, I wouldn't trust many general ed. professors that I had to take. They don't need that information. They need your name and a university assigned ID number. Only a few people in admin. really need your SSN and they should be able to look it up by your Student ID number.
... would suggest that you hire a lawyer. You can bet that the college did.
Three Squirrels
Seeing as most of the administration sees information loss as nothing more than a potential liability to them, you need to make it clear to the University top administration that this gaffe is totally unacceptable. They need to understand how bad this is -- and that it will affect their alumni fund drives.
I'm assuming that you're fully aware of the potential problems, and how serious they are (why else would you be asking the question). You need to inform the administration, by letter (make sure you cc: your local newspapers and television station(s), and follow up with them to try to get somre more negative publicity for the U), just how serious it is.
One other thing you can do (from an OU mishap):
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Tit for tat.
If they are that sloppy, then these numbers should be easy to get. And it "cant be wrong" because the administration let your number get out.
I'm waiting for the inevitable "You shouldn't do any business with those careless assholes! Transfer immediately!" replies. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be anyplace that actually implements indentity security correctly (Thanks USGov/Financial System/Educational System for making the sole key to my identity something anyone can find out for $19.95 or less!). If you're really concerned, pay for a credit monitoring service yourself. Chalk it up to yet another random fee that you have to pay to get an education.
The professor can't retroactively encrypt the data, nor can anybody unsteal the computers that contained it.
The only thing you mention is that you want to see the professor disciplined. Will this bring your data back? Will you benefit from the discipline of a professor whose class you took years ago?
What more do you want the school to do for you? You mentioned that you felt 90 days of credit monitoring was insufficient. Of course, now you can personally monitor it yourself free of charge.
Just decide what it is you want and ask the school for it. You never know. If your request is reasonable, you just might get it.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Sera
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This is exactly why I don't give my college my SSN. Data theft from schools is becoming way too common for me to be comfortable. Colleges don't need your SSN, they use it as a convienent way to generate your StudentID. Most colleges accept out-of-country students, who don't have SSNs, and have a system for generating StudentID numbers for them. My college gives me the option to use either my SSN or have a number generated for me, you can guess which one I chose.
Seriously. Nobody but your bank and employer need your SSN, and it's not supposed to be used for non-Social Security identification purposes anyway. Why people insist on using it as such, and why people still freely give it away just boggles my mind.
Ahh, UTA. My bittersweet alma matter. Had some great times there, and some really frustrating times.
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Perhaps the most frustrating was when my name, phone number, dorm room number and Social Security Number were PUBLISHED ON THE INTERNET. This was in Feb 2003. The university was notified, they eventually took down the webpages that had been indexed by Google (searching for someone's name who lived anywhere on campus at UTA resulted in their social security number popping up in a result on Google. How handy!) and they engaged in massive spin-control.
After it happened, it became fairly public knowledge that UTA used your social security number as your student id, and that your student id was actually encoded in plaintext on your student id card. Lose your student id card, lose your social security number.
The University of Texas System made some system-wide rules after another data security incident occurred shortly thereafter at the University of Texas at Austin. Schools were no longer to release social security numbers to professors, since they had no need for it, and all schools in the UT System were to stop using social security numbers as identifiers within a year or two. This deadline was continually extended, until they finally set it at September 2007.
UTA knew that too many people had access to students social security numbers; indeed, the school newspaper has over 92 articles concerning the school's use of social security numbers, the questionable legality of such use and the dangers (ref.: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=social+security+
My social was also one of the ID #'s that were stolen in this theft. I too, was appalled at how UTA handled this. Originally, the notification on UTA's website said that the Office of Information Technology would have a form you could fill out giving them your email address and asking them to check if you were affected; the notification was later edited to say that you must call the University's registrar's office and update your address, email address and phone number if you wanted them to contact you - clearly an effort to update the records of the Office of Development so that they could get your current address to begin spamming you about their new fundraising campaigns. And the "discounted" identity monitoring service...from a company I've never even heard of? Nice, UTA. Makes me so proud to call UTA my alma matter.
I honestly think there's enough here for a lawsuit, and would love to participate in it. Anyone heard anything about a suit, or considering one?
The fundamental problem here is the credit reporting system itself. I suppose after being subjected to the education system for twelve to twenty years or so, that learned helplessness with respect to the contents of a report card or GPA is deeply engrained.
The contents of the average credit report amount to unsubstantiated slander. It's tremendously easy for smudges to accumulate, with little effective recourse. In any other life circumstance, the same poor, fragmentary, and unsubstantiated quality of information about a person's status and character would be open to action as libelous.
I think the credit reporting agencies should be made libel for reporting negative information about any person as a result of criminal credential fraud. Even our terminology is wrong: we are talking about the theft of credentials not personal identity. An identity can't be stolen. Only the credentials are subject to third party manipulation. The institutions who choose to accept credentials as evidence of an identity should be prepared to bear the cost of their own mistakes.
And the worst of it is that our existing credentials are designed by baboons. It's not humanly possible to protect credentials you hand to every teenage till monkey five times a day.
We all know the truism that when you hear one person criticize another, it says as much about the person making the criticism as it does about the person being criticized. Yet the credit reporting agencies are somehow given a free pass which I've never understood. Might it be that a bad credit report reflects bad credit reporting practice? I guess we're so overwhelmed by our powerlessness in that relationship (my god, even more powerful than Miss Wormwood) that you rarely hear it suggested that perhaps the credit agencies themselves are no better than ICANN or VeriSign.