macwheel99wowway.com
Date: Wed Jan 21 2009 - 21:42:07 CST

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This is a violation of FERPA = Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act ...
see this link for more info
http://74.125.47.132/custom?
q=cache:KSgKjscIsMMJ:www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/doc/uwisc.doc+ssn&hl=en&
ct=clnk&cd=13&gl=us&client=google-coop-np

Basically it is a big no-no to be identifying students by their social
security #. US colleges and universities habitually violate this law that
is unenforced by the US Dept of Education. If FERPA was enforced, the
result could be a dramatic drop in breaches of student data that can be used
for identity theft.

If this institution was in compliance with the law, then no staff or faculty
member would have been allowed access to student SSN ... it would not have
been on any carelessly used spread sheet.

However programs administered US gov for financial aid etc. need SSN of
child or parent, so there's still a ways to go to protect the students.

 kirniki wrote
> http://www.news-leader.com/article/20090121/NEWS04/901210456
>
> January 21, 2009
> Sensitive personal information -- including Social Security numbers -
> - for 565 foreign students at MSU was leaked this month when a
> university office sent an e-mail message with the data inadvertently
> attached. Advertisement
>
> The school is investigating the incident and will contact all
> international students, offering answers and options to guard against
> identity theft, university officials said Tuesday.
>
> The leak occurred Jan. 14 when Jody Pritt, director of international
> student services, contacted 179 international students via e-mail,
> soliciting their help with language tutoring, Smart said.
>
> Only those who speak Bosnian, Arabic, Czech, Estonian, Romanian,
> Turkish, Hebrew, Lithuanian or the Indian dialect of Punjabi were
> contacted, said Clif Smart, MSU's legal counsel.
>
> The message they got from Pritt, however, had a spreadsheet
> attachment that contains names and Social Security numbers for
international
> students, Smart said.
>
> It doesn't have the students' dates of birth.
>
> The university realized the misstep within minutes and recalled some
> messages, Smart said.
>
> [...]
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