Texas A&M admits to putting faculty, graduate assistants' Social Security numbers and personal info

Texas A&M may have inadvertently compromised personal data belonging to fewer than 5,000 university faculty members and graduate students, according to an email sent to possible victims earlier this week.

According to the one-page email sent by A&M associate vice president of academic services Joseph Pettibon, the Social Security numbers, along with first and last names, of 4,697 faculty and graduate assistants who taught during the Fall 2014 semester were displayed online in that semester's Teaching Analysis Report (STAR). The report was posted Feb. 13 and accessed by 33 people, a little less than half of whom did not have university IP addresses. The university discovered the mistake on March 8 and removed access to the site.

"Texas A&M University takes the security of personal data seriously. We are diligently addressing an incident in which the names and Social Security numbers of faculty members and graduate students were inadvertently made viewable from a departmental website," A&M interim president of marketing and communications Shane Hinckley said in a statement. "The university took swift action upon discovering the error including the immediate removal of the data and notifying those that were impacted."

In a second email sent by Pettibon on Wednesday, the university said that it did not believe any fraudulent activity occurred as a result of the incident. However, A&M has partnered with LifeLock, an identity theft protection company, to provide free identity monitoring to those affected for a year, as well as to give tips to protect against identity theft.

Read more: http://www.theeagle.com/news/local/texas-a-m-admits-to-have-mistakenly-put-faculty-graduate/article_d54db236-e4f6-5546-8a67-077d216f61fc.html