[Dataloss] IA: UI contacts former students after laptop theft

[lyger]

http://www.press-citizen.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071008/NEWS01/71008002/1079

The University of Iowa is informing 184 former and current students that 
their grade information was contained on a laptop computer stolen from a 
former teaching assistant now living in Arizona.

The theft of the computer, which occurred last month in a break-in of the 
instructor's home, contained class records such as attendance, test 
scores, and grades of students who took his philosophy courses at the UI 
between 2002 and 2006. Social security numbers (SSNs) were also present in 
100 of the records.

UI Information Technology Security Officer Jane Drews analyzed backup 
copies of the files and found them an unlikely source for committing 
identity theft. "The instructor buried the files in his directory 
structure and obfuscated the social security numbers," Drews said. "While 
they were not encrypted, popular SSN scanning tools were unable to detect 
SSNs in any of the five files."

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