FORT MONROE, Virginia. On November 3, 2007 the Liberty Coalition discovered files online that contain sensitive information for 4,057 former ROTC scholarship winners from across the country, including 551 Social Security Numbers. The remaining files contain full names, academic majors, schools, scholarship award and suspense information, and other information for 3,506 individuals. It is unclear whether any of this information is protected by FERPA.
The ROTC website’s Privacy Policy states that “All information provided by military sources on this site is considered public information and may be distributed or copied.” By making Students’ names and Social Security Numbers available online, apparently as “public information,” the ROTC put these individuals at severe risk of identity theft.
The Liberty Coalition was unable to determine how long the files were available online, but they were created or last modified as early as November 27, 2006. The file containing the most sensitive information was confirmed removed from the website on November 6, 2007. However, the information remained in Google’s search engine caches until mid December, 2007.
You can confirm whether you were affected by this breach by searching for your name at www.ssnbreach.org.
About SSNBreach.org
SSNBreach.org is a free online directory of victims of personal information breach, that tells you whether your personal information has been exposed.
SSNBreach.org does NOT contain sensitive data, such as Social Security Numbers (SSN), Birth Dates, Addresses, and the like. Consequently, there is no way to search for your SSN or any other type of sensitive data on SSNBreach.org. Instead of storing sensitive information, we document what information was exposed, and the situation surrounding the breach. This information allows victims to further investigate, take action, or correct any harm from the exposure.
Source: www.ssnbreach.org.