At first it was only college students who were hit hard by a lack of security. Now it has sunk down all the way to second graders. The youth have been impacted and might have to deal with the threat of identity theft for the rest of their life while those who just took the ACT and are beginning their college careers are also affected. Williamson County school board officials recently announced that a former school board official illegally posted a breach of student social security numbers, names, and addresses on the internet.

The person responsible for posting the information on the internet is former Student Assessment Director Chris Nugent. It appears that, without consent, he copied the information to a jump drive and then was using the information for a college project he was working on. Although he had no intention of posting the private data online, it was inadvertently uploaded while he was working on his project. Unfortunately, this breach went unnoticed for over a year. It was only discovered after a student was searching for information about themselves on the internet that the news of the breach spread.

In all, around 5,000 student had their social security numbers released, while another 10,000 students had their names and ACT scores posted online. The school superintendent, Rebecca Sharber, found out about the breach on June 26, but waited until July 9 before alerting the wider school community. She has explained this delay in notifying the affected parties as a way of making sure that she had all the facts straight before addressing the litany of questions she knew she would face from parents. While she might have been better prepared for the questions, she has also drawn fire from parents who think she waited too long before announcing the breach.

Other school board members were also upset about the delay. One parent noted that there was such inconsistency with the information provided by everyone. At one point it was 15% of all students in the district, then it was 3rd-8th graders and then it was finally the correct information about second graders and those who took the ACT last year. Some parents have expressed their concern about this incident haunting the lives of their kids for years to come and are worried with all the paperwork that now needs to be filed to take care of everything. One way that people can avoid this type of paranoia is to subscribe to ID theft services, such as Lifelock. These companies contact all three credit bureaus and alert their customers whenever a new application, such as a credit card or loan, is filed. Lifelock verifies that these are being opened by the real person and are not an attempt at identity theft.