LifeLock Blog

Binghamton University has been keeping their current and former students’ records in a very public, easily accessible, unlocked storage area—in fact, the door to the storage area was actually taped open.

Roughly 42,000 students are currently enrolled at the university, but because the records include information on students enrolled as far back as the mid-nineties–and their parents–the number of records is expected to easily exceed 100,000.

News reporters spent hours last week perusing the records found haphazardly scattered around the two-story storage area in boxes and binders, stacked loosely on open shelving and stuffed in unlocked file cabinets.

Every imaginable type of personal and financial information for the students and their parents was available to anyone meandering through the halls or attending classes in one of the most commonly used lecture halls on campus.

The compromised records include:

• Records of tuition payments sorted by Social Security number.
• Receipts for tuition payments, complete with credit card account information.
• Residency records with tax information and copies of students’ parents’ Social Security cards.
• Scans of students’ Social Security cards, driver’s licenses and vehicle registrations.
• Scans of a letter from the U.S. government granting a student’s mother asylum.
• Scans of W-9 tax forms from a student’s parents, both parents’ social security numbers, tax forms for the parents’ business and Social Security numbers and vital information for the parents’ employees.
• Undeliverable mail which included students’ names, addresses and Social Security numbers.

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