Student Financial Aid Database Being Misused 182
pin_gween writes "The Washington Post reports on the probable abuse of the National Student Loan Data System. The database was created in 1993 to help determine which students are eligible for financial aid. Students' Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, and loan balances are in the database. It contains 60 million student records and is covered by federal privacy laws. Advocates worry that businesses are trolling for marketing data they can use to bombard students with mass mailings or other solicitations. The department has spent over $650,000 in the past four years protecting the data. However, some senior education officials are advocating a temporary shutdown of access to the database until tighter security measures can be put in place."
Or we could stop fixing the wrong problem (Score:2, Insightful)
1. We need to reign in junk mail; and
2. Financial institutions need to stop treating a social security number as some sort of password.
Only $650k? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:All databases eventually get hacked (Score:5, Insightful)
Solution to telemarketers: just hang up!
Solution to junk mail: just throw it away!
Solution to spam: just delete it!
Are you serious?? Are you mad??
Financial aid is effing broken anyway (Score:1, Insightful)
This all fails to address the very simple fact that my parents give me nothing, and the government seems to think they should be giving me $5k/yr. Misuse my data, who cares. Just pay for my education like a good
Re:All databases eventually get hacked (Score:2, Insightful)
Plus in the description it says it is not just emails, it is Social, email, and phone. But it has got to include your address and birth date, and other info because I know I get mail from the government about my loans from them.
Re:My stragegy for stopping the junk mail... (Score:4, Insightful)
Now these scum bags are sending offers in envelopes that say things like "final notice," and "government notice." Shouldn't this be illegal? Now I actually have to examine some of the more deceiving items to make sure they're not real.
more than $650,000 (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow, a whopping $650k? What's that, two salaries plus expenses?
I think that more accurately spun "the agency has spent less than $700,000 since 2003...."
Re:Not that simple (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:My stragegy for stopping the junk mail... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Duh... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What's the solution? (Score:1, Insightful)
Easy. In many countries, certainly in Europe and Australasia the SSN or equivalent has no value as identification. All loan applications, credit card applications, opening of bank accounts are completed only after valid ID has been seen. All the US has to do is bring in a similar requirement and you cut the legs from under the most widespread and obvious scams.
I'm not saying this will solve all problems, but it at least closes the front door to the thieves. The fact that the US has been unwilling to introduce such a requirement sort of implies (to my suspicious mind, at least) a degree of collusion with the scammers.
It's time (Score:3, Insightful)
This would give individuals rights around information that government and third parties collect on them, the most important being informed consent. It should be a crime to divulge or acquire electronic records without informed consent of the subject, excepting national intelligence and criminal investigation. Furthermore the right of informed consent by manadatory opt-in should be inalienable. Right now the status of privacy rights in the US can be summed up, to a first approximation, as this: if you can get your hands on a piece of information about somebody without breaking a law, it's yours to do with as you please for whatever you please.
If the government collects information about you, and it is divulged in a way that is not clearly illegal, then it becomes fair game. If you sue or are sued, the records of that suit, win, lose, or settled, can be harvested and put into commercial intelligence databases on you. If you sue your employer, you may find it hard to get a job afterwards. The records are made public to ensure the fair operation of the courts, but the same process exposes you to unfair judgment in an invisible (to you) commercial database.
Civilization will not come to an end if people are participants in how their information is used and divulged. Such rights are guaranteed in Europe via the European Convention on Human Rights. Harmonizing our laws with Europe will be good in the long term for our industry. Right now we are operating under an exception that allows EU data to be processed by American companies that promise to follow EU guidelines. But information privacy is not valued at all by companies here and therefore they aren't any good at it. It's only a matter of time before some horrible mishandling of data puts this on the trade agenda again.
Bringing ourselves up to scratch with the best international standards would be better for our citizens than digging in our heels. It would hurt some individual companies, but in the long run will allow American companies to compete better in a global services economy.
Re:Financial aid is effing broken anyway (Score:3, Insightful)
Because his future salary will repay them in taxes. There's a reason that countries that introduce free education go on to become wealthier a few years later.