Members of the WHRW news team came across a stack of documents containing the names, Social Security numbers and other personal information of students who attended Binghamton University in the 1970s in a dumpster on campus last week.
Five members of WHRW, Bingamton University’s campus radio station, found the papers lying in a dumpster near the loading dock next to the New University Union last Monday, Oct. 13. The documents included 56 names and Social Security numbers in a total of 91 different documents. Some entries also included birth dates, residences, grades and stipend information of what appeared to be students in the German department from the 1970s.
“We were going by the loading dock because the University throws out really neat stuff there and we found a stack of documents on top of a dumpster,” WHRW’s News Director Rob Glass said.
The individuals then took the documents back to their office to catalogue the information so they’d be able to contact the individuals, and contacted the University the next morning.
“They [members of the administration] showed deep concern and sent a University Police Department investigator over to collect the documents within the hour,” he said, adding that the news team also turned over a list of people who had access to the documents.
BU spokeswoman Gail Glover said the documents were found in a recycling bin in the loading dock, and that some of the 56 people listed are now deceased. The University is still investigating how the documents were left in the dumpster and how information security can be improved, she added.
“Although we have no indication that any of this information will be misused, the University provided information on how the individuals can place a fraud alert through one of the three major credit agencies,” she wrote in an e-mail.
Glover said the University-wide practice is that any documentation no longer needed should be shredded. According to Glover, the documents are now in the possession of the New York State University Police at BU.
These findings come after at least three information leaks last year, including an accidental e-mail sent by a School of Management undergraduate adviser to more than 200 accounting students last semester. The e-mail listed the full names, GPAs and Social Security numbers of 338 SOM students.
Three weeks later WHRW reported that they had found an envelope in their office, which was supposed to reach the Registrar, containing the Social Security numbers of Turkish students. The envelope also included documents with photocopies of the students’ passports and immigration cards.
Glass said that a pile of shredded documents sat beneath the files he and the other individuals confiscated.