Penn State Department of Geosciences Exposes 39 Students' Personal Information
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 17, 2007Media Contact: Aaron Titus
(202) 669-2969
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pennsylvania. In September, 2007 the Liberty Coalition discovered four files on the Penn State Department of Geosciences website containing social security Numbers, assignment scores, test scores, and grades of roughly 39 students.
The University and FBI were notified, and Penn State removed the files within a few business hours of notification. The files were confirmed deleted from Google's cache in mid-October. However, cached versions of the files remained in other major search engines until mid-November, 2007.
Individuals affected by this exposure should immediately visit www.nationalidwatch.org and search for their names, to confirm what types of personal information were exposed. NationalIDWatch.org has a list of recommended steps victims should take.
About NationalIDWatch.org
National ID Watch is a search engine for personal information breaches. Sponsored by the Washington, DC non-profit Liberty Coalition, NationalIDWatch.org provides more than a million free personalized Identity Exposure Reports™ as a public service.
Each Identity Exposure Report (IXR) documents what types of personal information were exposed (such as Social Security Numbers, Birth Dates, Addresses, etc.), without revealing them. Each IXR also details the situation surrounding each exposure, and contact information of those responsible for the breach. Armed with this information, victims can further investigate, take action, or correct harm.