<p>AUSTIN, Texas The University of Texas at Austin officials announced today (April 23) that an unknown person or persons has gained entry to the McCombs School of Business computers and gained unauthorized access to a large number of McCombs electronic records.</p>
<p>It is our highest priority to notify those who may be affected by this security breach, said university President William Powers Jr. We have notified the attorney general and his Internet enforcement unit and are doing everything we can to protect those whose information has been accessed unlawfully.</p>
<p>The security violation was discovered late Friday, April 21, and the university has devoted all available resources to identify the extent and source of the breach. Some of an estimated 197,000 records were accessed.</p>
<p>An investigation has determined that information from the business schools computer system was obtained as early as April 11, including some Social Security numbers and possibly other biographical data, including those of alumni, faculty, staff and current and prospective students of the business school as well as corporate recruiters.</p>
<p>Alarming given how much personal information is required in the application process....student and parent names, socials, birthdates, tax returns, credit cards, at some schools: photos/images. One stop shopping for identity theft.</p>
<p>I don't think they will have that information. That info should be compartmentalized so only the financial aid people can see it. It was just the McCombs network that was breached. This still probably means we are screwed when it comes to SSN's. We'll see what happens. There were a bunch of reporters trying to interview students for the evening news in front of McCombs around 5pm today.</p>
<p>this is exactly why i hate putting my SSN on almost all college forms and scholarships....</p>
<p>i actually didnt fill out lots of online scholarships becuase they asked for SSN and im not good with trusting random scholarship sites with that info....</p>
<p>twl007 - I wasn't speaking directly to this incident...rather to the risk in general when making application to college. It seems we reveal so much personal information from beginning to end in this process.</p>
<p>UT keeps getting better for me - first they raise OOS tuition 65% and now someone may have stolen my ssn. I tried putting a fraud watch with the credit bureaus and they were not able to do it automatically.
Maybe this is a sign texas isn't the school for me?</p>
<p>I'm looking at the same thing too if this is a bad sign. However, they did give me a full ride so I have to give my respect and appreciation for that.</p>
<p>my sister applied to UCSD back in 2001 and she ended up not going there</p>
<p>earlier this year she got a letter in the mail sayin someone had broken into the UCSD records and may have gained access to her personal information, even though she never even attended the university, all she did was apply there</p>
<p>so dont get too worried about this stuff</p>
<p>its not a bad sign</p>
<p>texas is a good school and u should be happy with your decision</p>
<p>full rides are given out to those with extraordinary stats. usually around top 3% at least, with at least a 1500ish (out of 1600) SAT score. i have two friends who had similar stats that got near-fullrides.</p>
<p>Yeah I was top 2% of my class with close to 1400 SAT. Also my EFC was 88 indicating my family was pretty poor. If only these stats got me into BHP as well lol.</p>
<p>darn. maybe i should have applied for merit aid. i got into plan2 and bhp and decided not to apply for scholarships. whoops. i guess i'll just apply spring semester or next fall. shrug.. did merit scholarships consider need?</p>
<p>about the data theft thing. has anyone else been receiving a lot of spam lately? i never give out my gmail email account to online programs/subscriptions (i use my yahoo account). but lately, i've been getting like 10-15 spam emails a day in my gmail spam inbox. i haven't opened any of them.</p>