On Tuesday, ABC reported that a computer containing 7,000 CUNY students’ personal information, including names and social security numbers, had been stolen weeks ago.
CUNY sent the unlucky 7,000 letters warning them that the thief knows more about them than they should. The letter included a support hotline for those concerned to contact the school at (212) 650-5426, but students ABC spoke to say no one answered the number provided.
The computer is password protected, but that probably isn’t much of a stumbling block to accessing the information. Here’s to NYU hopefully using more creative passwords than I<3JSex to protect our identities.
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I applied to Columbia at the same time I applied to NYU, and the same thing happened – laptops with students’ personal information got stolen, and I received that lovely letter that made me hyperventilate a little (okay, a lot). They offered the ones whose information got stolen a two-year subscription to an identity theft monitor thing, and luckily nothing’s happened (to me, anyway) yet. Woooo for information age thievery.
And people worry about what Google might do with all their emails, search history and other junk. Your school losing your SSN is a much bigger issue – and this has happened multiple times in the past (including to the US government).
Why all this highly sensitive information is being stored on a laptop in the first place makes no sense. It should be on a secure server that can only be accessed from certain computers, and only then by very specific people.
What can someone actually do with your social security number anyway? don’t they need something more than that for identity theft?