Data Breach, the Old Fashioned Way
By someone’s losing an unencrypted thumb drive containing the names and addresses of over 100,000 adult education students, according to the Norfolk, Va., Virginian-Pilot. The drive was lost track of on September 21 and is probably just lost, but the incident is still going to cost the Commonwealth of Virginia a lot of money before it’s over:
- The drive also contained data for 25,693 former students whose addresses were unknown. Those who took an adult education course between April 1, 2007 and June 30, 2009, or who passed a high school equivalency test between January 1, 2001 and June 30, 2009, should call the department (Virginia Department of Education) at 877-347-5224 for information on the loss.
Now, I can’t find one of my thumbdrives. The one that I know where it is (diagram that sentence) is a boot drive for Slackware Linux 10.2. The one I can’t find contains a few pictures and documents networked via sneakernet. Neither of them contains personal information that could endanger either my privacy or the privacy of anyone else.
Then, again, I’m not a government employee handling sensitive personal information.