While college students are often victims of credit card scams, it is not as common that they are victims of identity theft – unless, of course, the college that they attend has lax security on its data, such as if this college is the University of Nebraska. In late May, the school announced that the records of 650 plus thousand alumni and students were compromised. It then later added that the records also included those of parents applying for financial aid for their children.
These records included not only names but addresses, academic records, and Social Security numbers. Victims were notified two days after the university found out about the identity theft. “When an incident happens we bring all of the necessary resources. We had probably 25 to 30 individuals working on this since the moment it happened,” said security officer Joshua Mauk. This is not any kind of relief for those who had their information stolen.
The sooner you find out your information has been compromised, the sooner you can do what you need to do to keep it from getting compromised further. Keeping incidents such as this one a secret may seem like a good PR move, but it is a poor choice to make. It is especially a poor one when news of your lagging response is released to the public.
That’s the great thing about having identity theft protection. You can be proactive instead of reactive. It’s likely that people who were victims of this unfortunate incident and had plans in place were saved a lot of the stress others had to deal with because they found out in a more timely manner. That is what these plans are designed to do: both notify you and protect you.
You can find out more about the plans that are available simply by browsing this website. They can help you even if you have already been a victim of identity theft. In fact, if you have, you may even find them to be more helpful since you should keep a closer watch on your information from now on. It’s likely the University of Nebraska will offer victims some sort of identity theft protection or credit watch to atone for the mistake. The longer they wait, though, the more they are putting thousands of people’s credit and good names at risk.