Hard drive with 23,000 Social Security numbers disappears

[Rink]

Hard drive with 23,000 Social Security numbers disappears
Cal State officials believe the data was inadvertently tossed in trash

News Story by Todd R. Weiss

SEPTEMBER 03, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - 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.

More on this Story (http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,95690,00.html)

[Triller]

Does the university get fined for that?

[DoctorDoom]

S-canning a hard drive without wiping or destroying it is a major-league NO-NO. The mitigating circumstance would be whether the drive was replaced because it was non-functional and could not be read.

It's possible to extract the platters and mount them in a working drive assembly, but that's a task far beyond the ability of the average ID-theft scumball.