The disappearance of a laptop hard drive in the
California State University (CSU) system has triggered a year-old
state law requiring anyone whose personal information might have
been stolen to be notified.
The hard drive, which contained names, addresses and social
security numbers for some 23,000 students, faculty members and
employees at seven CSU campuses, is believed to have been
accidentally thrown away after it was replaced by an IT technician,
said Clara Potes-Fellow, a spokeswoman for the university's
chancellor's office.
We have not had any cases of identity theft related to the
incident, she said. But under the new law, letters were mailed to
all 23,000 people affected by the data loss in late July to inform
them of the situation.
Under the California law that went into effect last year,
businesses and public agencies are required to inform individuals
when their names - in combination with either their social security
numbers, driver's licence numbers or credit/debit card numbers with
personal identification numbers - have been accessed by an
unauthorised person.
The hard drive went missing over the weekend of 25 June,
Potes-Fellow said, when a computer technician was "rushing to get
out of the office on a Friday afternoon" and left the part on a
table next to a rubbish bin after replacing it with a new drive.
When the technician returned the following Monday, the old drive
and the box from the new drive were missing.
A police investigation concluded that the drive had not likely
been stolen but was probably thrown away by a cleaning crew,
Potes-Fellow said. Cleaning crew workers told police that it was
not unusual for them to find discarded computer parts in the trash
cans, she said.
The university system has received about 350 comments from some
of the affected users, Potes-Fellow said. About four of the users
said they suspected that they had recently been victims of identity
theft, but they could not link the incidents to the disappearance
of the university's hard drive, she said.
Todd R Weiss writes for Computerworld