Data Theft Hits 3.3 Million Borrowers

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Company and federal officials said they believed last week's theft of identity data on 3.3 million people with student loans was the largest-ever breach of such information and could affect as many as 5% of all federal student-loan borrowers.

Names, addresses, Social Security numbers and other personal data on borrowers were stolen from the St. Paul, Minn., headquarters of Educational Credit Management Corp., a nonprofit guarantor of federal student loans, during the weekend of March 20-21, according to the company.

ECMC said the stolen information was on a portable media device. "It was simple, old-fashioned theft," said ECMC spokesman Paul Kelash. "It was not a hacker incident."

Citing state and federal criminal investigations, ECMC has released only limited information about the theft since posting a notice on its Web site Friday. It plans to notify affected customers in writing this week.



Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304434404575150024174102954.html

[glinda]

1. hopefully what I owe will get lost in it all....

[Tansy_Gold]

2. me too, me too. n/t

[Mnemosyne]

3. Add up all the data theft since Choicepoint in January 2005 and the numbers are

mind-boggling.

350,381,282 = TOTAL number of records containing sensitive personal information involved in security breaches in the U.S. since January 2005.

http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/ChronDataBreaches.htm#CP

[CynicalObserver]

4. if you have any credit history or active loans/accounts over the last 10 years, you pretty much

have to assume your data has been stolen at least once. Those numbers are just what companies KNOW about. It is only logical to expect that total number of data record thefts is substantially larger than 350Million.