Friday, January 26, 2007 11:39 PM CST
EIU computer, IDs stolen
1,400 students affected
By the JG/T-C
editorial@jg-tc.com
CHARLESTON -- Letters have been distributed to approximately 1,400 Eastern Illinois University students, notifying them that confidential information, including their Social Security numbers, were stored on a desktop computer recently stolen from the university’s Student Life office.
The stolen files include the membership rosters and other data from the university’s 23 fraternities and sororities.
According to Dan Nadler, vice president for student affairs, someone broke into the office sometime late Wednesday/early Thursday and removed the password-protected desktop computer and the hard drive and memory from two others. The office is located on the third floor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Union.
While the two individual hard drives contained only general correspondence, the desktop computer contained membership rosters from Eastern’s fraternities and sororities. The database contained personal information, including Social Security numbers, birth dates and addresses, of each member.
The University Police Department is continuing its investigation of the incident. Meanwhile, Nadler said, university personnel have been busy preparing and sending advisories to those whose names appear on the rosters. In addition to official notification of the incident, the letters included safety recommendations each student may take.
“Although we have no evidence that an unauthorized individual has actually retrieved and is using the data, we are bringing this theft to your attention so that you can be extra alert to signs of any possible misuse of your information,” the letter reads.
Nadler stressed that the missing information is that of students currently enrolled at the university. He credited the efforts of Norma Taylor, Greek Life secretary, for “minimizing the amount of information” stored on the stolen computer.
“She does an incredible job of purging older information from semester to semester, thus reducing the risk for breaches of information,” he said. “Former Greek Life students have no need for concern in this matter.”
In 2005, Eastern began transitioning to a campus-wide computer infrastructure which will drastically decrease the university’s use of staff and students’ Social Security numbers, and completely eliminate Social Security number use for identification purposes. That transition is scheduled to be completed in early 2008.
Add your comments
Not already registered?
Then click Here.
Comment policy:
JG-TC.com encourages readers to engage in civil conversation with their neighbors. Comments that are submitted are not posted to the site immediately. They go into a queue to be moderated and may take several hours to be reviewed. Comments posted on Saturday may not be reviewed until Sunday afternoon.
In order to keep the page a set width, long lines (mostly long links) will be chopped. Try putting spaces in your links or consider using tinyurl.com to make a smaller link that you can include.
We will never edit or alter your comments, but we do reserve the right to remove comments that violate our code of conduct.
No comment may contain:
* Potentially libelous statements; such as accusing somebody of a crime, defamation of character, or statements that can harm somebody's reputation.
* Obscene, explicit, or racist language.
* Personal attacks, insults, threats, harassment or inciting violence.
* Commercial product promotions.
If you have any questions, please contact our moderator.
|
|
|
Stephen wrote on Jul 17, 2006 8:22 AM: