The 18,700 students whose social security numbers were inadvertently exposed during the summer by a mailing error have a little more time to protect themselves from the consequences. The deadline to enroll in the University-sponsored free credit monitoring offered to the students has been extended to Nov. 30, Patricia Lampkin, vice president and chief officer of student affairs, said to students in an email.
The initial deadline was Oct. 31, but low student enrollment caused the University to extend the deadline.
“A relatively low number of students have signed up for the free service, and the University encourages those affected to take advantage of the extension of the sign-up period,” University spokesperson McGregor McCance said.
The monitoring product, provided by Experian, is just one of the ways the University is taking measures to insure the protection of students’ personal information after the social security release incident. Additionally, University President Teresa Sullivan initiated a task force to examine and protect the future use of personal information.
“The first phase of that work is complete,” McCance said. “Among the changes from phase one: Social Security numbers are no longer uploaded into the Department of Student Health database from the Student Information System, the particular query used to pull student information in the original inadvertent SSN use will no longer be used, and future communication regarding the Aetna student health plan will be sent via email instead of through postal delivery.”
McCance confirmed that the next phase of the task force is to review the system and policies that collects, stores and secures personal information.
No legal proceedings stemming for the social security incident have been reported.
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