On March 11th a thief walked into a University of Cal at Berkeley office and walked out with a laptop. This laptop had personal information on it from about 100,000 alumni. Now if that wasn’t bad enough, they did not announce it to the public until now. University officials were hoping that police would be able to catch the thief and reclaim the computer. When that didn’t happen, the school publicized the theft to comply with a state law requiring consumers be notified whenever their Social Security numbers or other sensitive information have been breached. The university has set up a hotline, 1-800-372-5110, and a Web site, to answer questions about the laptop theft.http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/security/grad/
From the AP .. Universities have accounted for 28 percent of the 50 security breaches of personal information recorded by California since 2003, said Joanne McNabb, the chief of the state’s Office of Privacy Protection. That’s more than any other group, including financial institutions, which have accounted for 26 percent of the breaches affecting Californians. This is the second time in six months that UC Berkeley has been involved in a theft of personal information. Last September, a computer hacker gained access to UC Berkeley research being done for the state Department of Social Services. The files contained personal information of about 600,000 people. That security breach hasn’t been linked to any cases of identity theft, Felde said.