Students S.S. Numbers Leaked by Staff

By Samantha Beerman (OTR Editor)
Tags: transportation, blunders, Social Security numbers, identity theft, parking, Visa

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<div align="center"><img src="http://www.collegeotr.com/images/blogs/619c44fa16675bf9f27cbaa1b0e49080.jpg" class="blog_img" alt="Students S.S. Numbers Leaked by Staff" /></div><div class="clear" style="height:10px"></div><p>A recent incident at the University of Maryland that <a href="http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3183/social-security-numbers-of-u-of-maryland-students-exposed">expos</a></p>... <b>[ <a href="http://www.collegeotr.com/college_otr/students_ss_numbers_leaked_by_staff_10107">READ THE FULL POST AT OTR »</a> ]</b>

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Created: 07/23/2008
09:12 AM

A recent incident at the University of Maryland that exposed 24,000 students’ social security numbers has school officials saying, “My bad!”
 

The school’s Department of Transportation accidentally sent out parking brochures with mailing labels that had the addressee’s Social Security number on it. What, like those are important? Although the numbers weren’t identified as such and they lacked the typical spacing, the blunder could result in identity theft, which is not as cool as it sounds.
 

J. David Allen, the director of the department, apologized via email to the students affected, namely all those registered for upcoming fall classes. The email suggests students put a fraud alert on their credit files, consider a security freeze on the files, do credit monitoring, yada, yada, yada.
 

What I’m sure students are really wondering is, “Can I use this to somehow convince my parents it wasn’t me who overspent on my Visa card?”