Personal data on thousands of University of Arizona students publicly viewable

Students, vendors and others who received payments from the University of Arizona last year had their personal data posted to the school's public server.

How many victims? About 7,700 vendors, consultants, guest speakers and students.

What type of personal information? Names and Social Security numbers.

What happened? During an upgrade to the university's financial systems, thousands who submitted their personal data in order to receive school payments or reimbursements had their information mistakenly posted to a public server.

What was the response? The university sent letters to victims and offered them a free year of credit monitoring.

Details: The university found out about the breach after a student searched for herself on Google and saw her information posted on the university's public server. School officials initially assumed the server contained only public information. The university investigated the situation to find that some of the online data had already been accessed by strangers.  

Source: azstarnet.com, Arizona Daily Star, “University of Arizona server exposes personal data on 7,700,” Aug. 8, 2012.