There’s been yet another data breach in yet another public school district. This most recent security lapse revealed the personal information of approximately 5,000 employees of the Seattle School District in Seattle, WA.
The information was accidentally given to the local unions that represent many of the district’s employees, including those whose information was exposed. The 5,000 workers involved make up more than half of the school district’s total employees.
Approximately 700 of the affected employees were members of the International Union of Operating Engineers, which represents the district’s custodial, nutritional service, security-monitoring and alarm-monitoring workers.
The lost data included personal information, such as names, addresses and Social Security numbers.
According to the Chronology of Data Breaches, which is maintained by the nonprofit Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, the Seattle School District data breach brings the total records lost or stolen in data breaches to 245,207,093. That number represents known records, but the actual total is much higher. The unknown number of records lost in many data breaches causes the difference.
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If you can’t trust the school District with your information then what about all the other organizations that have information on me. I think that there needs to be laws that compensate people who get their identity stolen because data breaches. If your identity gets stolen after a data breach I think that the victims should be entitled to something.
After I heard that identity thieves will go after the identities of children hearing stories like this makes me uneasy about what information the school systems has on my children and me. Let’s just hope that schools are learning from these incidents and are securing their data. I won’t hold my breath though.
Maybe all the laid off teachers can take comfort in knowing their identities will be safer.
It sounds like you’re creating problems yourself by trying to solve this issue instead of looking at why their is a problem in the first place