Schools nationwide fight ID theft issues

Universities nationwide that frequently use Social Security numbers to identify students are no strangers to identity theft.

In March 2001, a temporary employee who worked in Penn's McNeil Building was arrested for using students' Social Security numbers to open credit card accounts. Similar incidents involving the misuse of students' personal information have been reported recently at schools around the country.

In 2001, The Daily Pennsylvanian reported that Kimberly McCarter used a computer database to gain access to Penn students' information, including Social Security numbers.

Shortly after the incident, the University hired the Ivy League's very first chief privacy officer to monitor Penn's efforts to secure sensitive data.

Since 2001, several other institutions have been forced to confront any vulnerability in their security systems.

Last month, approximately 1,800 New York University students realized that their names and Social Security numbers had been made publicly accessible through a glitch in a university Web site.

They had signed up via the Internet for intramural sports teams, and NYU accidentally made public the Web page that was supposed to keep their information private.

Also in January, computer hackers may have accessed the personal information of 31,000 University of Georgia students and applicants -- including names, birth dates and Social Security numbers.

UGA officials have attempted to contact all of the potential victims by e-mail or U.S. mail, and are warning those people not to respond to a fake e-mail that is circulating and offering them assistance, according to a university Web site.

At the University of Texas at Austin in March 2003, student Christopher Phillips was arrested for stealing approximately 55,000 students' records from school databases -- information that included Social Security numbers.

Phillips exploited a glitch in the system that allowed him to access the records from his home computer. The U.S. Secret Service arrested him and found the information on his computer hard drive.

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