TrustMeSecurity.com

The University of Florida campus paper has an article informing students that more than 11,000 current and former students had their private information, including Social Security numbers, posted online and that they may have been accessible to the public.

The data was collected from students who wanted to schedule tutoring. The page was used between 2003 and 2005 and was potentially accessible to anyone until it was discovered and removed in May.

Officials are trying to determine why Social Security numbers were collected, Orlando said.UF used Social Security numbers to identify students until 2002, when students were given a UFID number. It’s possible that there had been confusion over whether it was still appropriate, he said.

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The privacy breach is not unique to UF. In a similar situation Wednesday, the Columbia Daily Spectator reported that the Social Security numbers of 5,000 current and former Columbia University students had been posted online. Columbia arranged two year subscriptions to a credit monitoring service for the affected students, the paper reported.