A group of Georgia Tech students leaders want administrators to provide several measures they hope will help protect and prevent personal information about them from being disclosed.
The demands came in a meeting late Tuesday after some Georgia Tech College of Computing workers last month mistakenly emailed a spreadsheet containing information about nearly 8,000 students that included identification numbers, grade point averages and visa status.
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The measures include identity theft protection and specific plans to increase internal controls to limit employee access to such information, said Nate Knauf, a College of Computer student representative. They also want Georgia Tech to publicly clarify what went wrong.
“It’s a system problem, but the employees shouldn’t have had the information in the first place,” Knauf said in a telephone interview.
Georgia Tech spokesman Lance Wallace sent The Atlanta Journal-Constitution a statement on behalf of the institute that said in part:
“The response team has been in close communication with the students and is working on next steps. In a meeting with students July 31, the response team explained how the disclosure occurred, the steps that were taken to mitigate the spreading of the information, what can be offered to students to monitor any use of their data.”
The statement said the data did not include social security numbers or credit card information. Georgia Tech reported the disclosure to federal education officials and said they’ll respond to any recommendations.
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