Student Loan Company Exposes 3.3 Million to Potential Identity Theft
Identity theft is a growing problem. As a student with loans, you should know a student loan company just exposed up to 3.3 million people to potential identity theft problems.
Identity theft is the kind of crime that often conjures images of a hacker breaking through layers of encryption and security to swipe a bunch of credit cards. While this is occasionally true, many times the crime in question is the result of sheer stupidity by a company or person holding the information or a simple physical theft. The number of people who have left laptops in their cars with personal data only to see them stolen is nearly countless.
In this case, our offending company is Education Credit Management Corporation. The company, better known as EDMC, works with the Department of Education. It does not issue loans. Instead, it provides the department with collection and document management services. In this case, it fell down on the job something serious.
The company had a form of "portable media" stolen from it in March of 2010. The portable media, which was probably a disk or external hard drive, had information on over 3.3 million people on it. What kind of information? How about the legal name, addresses and social security numbers of the people who are about to unwittingly become victims of some serious identity theft?
Under California law, the company must notify the individuals impacted by the breach. It will do this by letter, so keep an eye out for any notice. For those impacted, the company has also arranged free credit monitoring with Experian. Isn't that nice? You'll know exactly when these start using your identification to buy things, take out loans in your name and so on. Oh, joy.
