The company widely known for its educational books that help prepare the nations future for standardized tests might want to recheck its notes on internet security.  It appears that a sizeable breach on the company’s website has exposed personal information of over 100,000 students who had registered with the company.  Not only does the company provide booklets through major publishing firms, but it also runs classes to help people with the ACT, SAT, LSAT, GRE, and MCAT.  While those groupings are still running, people have decided that Princeton needs a failing grade, at least for the moment.

The New York Times reported this week that the company had a flaw on its website that had pulled the files and put them on display for anyone visiting the main website who decided to click on a link.  What is interesting about this incident is that it was reported to the Times by a company which identified itself as a competitor to the Princeton Review.  Most people are assuming this is the Kaplan company, although there has been no confirmation on this assumption.  It appears that whatever business submitted the information the Review, they were trying to take advantage of the negative publicity generated against Princeton to boost their own sales.

When the Times contacted the Princeton Review to report the breach, they immediately took the information off the website and closed the hole that was creating the initial problem.  However, at this point, no one knows for how long the information was up for how many people accessed it.  The Review has said that they are looking into these details in addition to launching an internal investigation to see who posted the information.  While there is no suspicion of an intent to defraud the company or commit identity theft at this point, the company wants to see if any security regulations were violated by any of its employees.  The Review has sworn that it will instituted a sweeping security policy to make sure that this type of incident does not happen in the future.  It will also start deleting the information of students after it is no longer needed, rather than storing it as it has currently been doing.

While it is unlikely that enough information has been taken in this case to perpetrate the stealing of someone’s personal identity, since young adults are involved, one cannot be too cautious.  A suggestion has been to enroll in an ID theft subscription service, such as Lifelock, although the Review has not yet agreed to pay for such services.  Lifelock monitors all three major credit bureaus for loan and credit card applications.  These applications are then verified with the person whose name appears on the documents to make sure they are not fraudulent.  This helps prevent ID theft before it takes place.