University of Florida Screws its Students

Dumbass students put a spreadsheet or database containing almost 12,000 students names, addresses and social security numbers online, with no security protection. Why? So one or two of them could access the data from home. Along with every other criminal looking for identity theft victims.

From ABC7 here:

The University of Florida is sending letters to more than 11,000 current and former students to notify them that their Social Security numbers, names and addresses were accidentally posted online.

University officials said Tuesday that the privacy breach was recently discovered during a routine systems audit.

The information became available when former student employees of the Office for Academic Support and Institutional Service, or OASIS, program created online records of students participating in the program between 2003 and 2005. The information has been removed.

Pretty soon there will be more laws on how to handle privacy data than there is on handling toxic waste.  And as soon as people start treating this type of data like its a ticking time bomb, datalosses like this will diminish.