Letters have been distributed to approximately 1,400 Eastern Illinois University students, notifying them that confidential information, including their Social Security numbers, were stored on a desktop computer recently stolen from the university's Student Life office.
The stolen files include the membership rosters and other data from the university's 23 fraternities and sororities.
According to Dan Nadler, vice president for student affairs, someone broke into the office sometime late Wednesday/early Thursday and removed the password-protected desktop computer and the hard drive and memory from two others. The office is located on the third floor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Union.
While the two individual hard drives contained only general correspondence, the desktop computer contained membership rosters from Eastern's fraternities and sororities. The database contained personal information, including Social Security numbers, birth dates and addresses, of each member.