A laptop computer containing names and Social Security numbers of 93,000 people who attended Metropolitan State College of Denver from 1996 to 2005 was stolen from a campus employee’s home, leaving students vulnerable to identity theft.
The laptop was taken from the home of an admissions office employee Saturday. He was authorized to have the data for a grant he was working on for the school, said Metro State president Stephen Jordan.
The Social Security numbers were used to identify and track students and access historical information about them.
The employee is also a graduate student in the department of public affairs at the University of Colorado at Denver and was using the data to complete his master’s thesis.
Campus officials are investigating whether the employee should have been allowed to use the data for his thesis and if disciplinary action should be taken. The school is also probing procedures to determine if policies on releasing and storing certain data should be revamped.
“We are putting a plan in place to prevent this in the future and make sure it does not happen again,” Jordan said.
University officials do not have any evidence the information on the stolen laptop has been used.
Dan Brown, a 44-year-old business management student at Metro, said he has a lot to lose if his identity is stolen because he is already an established working adult, unlike younger students.
Brown can obtain a 90-day alert on his credit report for free, but he wondered if the school would pick up the cost of a seven-year alert to keep his identity more secure.
“They need to look at why this information was taken off campus, and something needs to be done about it,” Brown said.
All students who registered for any course at the school from the 1996 fall semester through the 2005 summer semester could be at risk, campus officials said. That includes students from other campuses, such as CU-Denver, who registered for a course at Metro in that time frame.
Tyler Snow, a 23-year-old Metro student, said he doesn’t understand how his personal information could be given to someone for a personal thesis.
“They should have filtered out that information and not allowed it to be accessed,” he said.
The Denver Police Department is looking for the laptop in pawn shops and on eBay.
The college launched a Web page with more information for those affected, www.mscd.edu/securityalert.
Jordan also urged students to contact a hotline through My Safe Campus at 866-737-6622 to learn how to report the breach to credit companies and get information on the incident.
He said the school will make attempts to reach all students whose information was exposed.
Staff writer Felisa Cardona can be reached at 303-820-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com.
