From Deseret News archives:
College puts private info on Net
What she found earlier this month shocked her.
Barb, a Westminster College alumna, found her name and the names of about 100 other students, former and current, printed in two files along with each student's Social Security number.
"It was very alarming," she said.
The files were on a student Web server used by Westminster students. The server is provided as a service by the college mostly for students to store items such as class projects.
When Westminster was made aware of the situation, school executive director of communications Laura Murphy said the files were removed immediately.
Barb hopes the incident will encourage the public to do frequent searches of their own names and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers just to make sure that information isn't out there for everyone to see.
The college says it has taken several steps to remedy the situation and to determine what happened so there's no chance of a repeat.
Although the investigation was still continuing Saturday, Murphy said it appeared initially the posting of the Social Security numbers was the result of someone's innocent mistake. She also noted the files were not in an area easily accessible by non-students, she said.
However, she said the situation was being taken seriously.
"We regret any inconvenience this may cause. We will do our best to make sure that information is safe-guarded," she said. "It's information that needs to be held in trust."
Murphy did not know how long that information may have been posted.
Furthermore, she said all of the students on the list had been contacted and Westminster had agreed to pay for credit monitoring to make sure no one obtained critical personal information and was trying to use it.
As of Saturday there had been no reports of any of the information from the students on that list being compromised.
E-mail: preavy@desnews.com
