The experts will tell you, when you’re choosing a university or college, look for a good fit, don’t limit your search to the name brand schools, ask the admissions office about scholarship and grant opportunities.
Here’s another tip: Check out their data breach record. Institutions of higher learning reported 173 data breaches in 2008, an increase of 24.5% over the previous year. More than 16 million individual records were exposed, but there were 18 incidents where the total number of records wasn’t reported.
Which universities are the worst?
Purdue University has reported a whopping eight data breaches since 2005, when the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse began tracking with their Chronology of Data Breaches. In the university’s defense, though there have been a lot of security lapses, only 17,691 records were exposed.
Compare that to the University of Florida, where they’ve reported six data breaches since November 2007, but exposed more than 440,000 records. Five of those occurred within the last 10 months.
Ohio University has seven reported data breaches since April 2006, exposing 363,010 records. That number is deceptive, though, because two of those reported data breaches were said to affect an unknown number of records, so the total is likely much higher.
How can students protect themselves?
The sad fact is that students and university employees (who are also affected in a number of these breaches) have no control over their personal information once it’s in the hands of their schools. The best hope is that if they diligently check their credit reports they can limit the financial damage if an identity thief uses their information.
Don’t wait till you get a data breach notice. Proactively safeguard your identity and your credit . Visit LifeLock.com for more information. Use the LifeLock promo code DEFENSE and pay only $9 a month.
Tags: LifeLock promotion code, Ohio University, Purdue University, University of Florida
Thanks for the information. Matthew starts college this fall and now we have another worry!
Please write about the recent data breach at Binghamton University.
Cool posting,like it! keep posting more!
Thanks for writing, I very much liked your newest post. I think you should post more often–there’s plenty of ID theft stories out there and more people need to know the risks!