Recent national financial aid theft will not affect UCC students

By Iam Pace · The Mainstream
Published April 20, 2010

The personal information for more than 3.3 million student loan accounts was stolen last month, according to reports by Steve Karnowski, an Associated Press reporter. The theft is purported to impact 5 percent of all students receiving loans.

The loan information, contained on a removable storage device, was taken between March 21 and 22 from the St. Paul, Minn., headquarters of Educational Credit Management Corp., according to ECMC’s press release. Paul Kelash, ECMC’s spokesperson, said the data included names, addresses, Social Security numbers and dates of birth, though no financial or bank account information was compromised.

Students at UCC, however, are not affected by the theft, according to Laurie Spangenberg, the director of financial aid. “We have never heard of anyone getting into the federal software used for direct loan processing,” Spangenberg said. She went on to explain that UCC’s financial aid and loan information is never placed on external storage devices, and any information is sent directly through federal software.

The Educational Credit Management Corp. is a private, nonprofit organization that deals with student loans. UCC’s financial aid department does not go through intermediaries, private or otherwise, and is protected by federal security because all the information is sent directly to government institutions.

“UCC students will not be affected by this theft,” Spangenberg stated.

While UCC students were spared, more than 3.3 million students nation wide now face potential consequences of identity theft.

"We deeply regret that this incident occurred and the stress it has caused our borrowers and our partners and are doing everything we can to help protect our borrowers' identity and personal information," Richard Boyle, president and CEO of ECMC said in a press release.

The company is working with Experian, a credit protection agency, to protect all the students affected with free credit monitoring and protection services for 12 months, as well as offering access to certified ID theft specialists.

The company spokesmen, Paul Kelash, reports that “no misuse of the data has been reported to date.”

According to the ECMC website, they are sending out letters to students affected by the theft. The letters were mailed out March 31, 2010, and all letters should have been mailed April 15, 2010. The notification letters included a code to activate a suite of free credit protection services provided through Experian.

Privacy Rights Clearinghouse’s “Chronology of Data Breaches” documents over 230 million records that have been compromised since January 2005, and that number continues to increase.