I came home last night to receive a letter from my undergrad alma mater with a couple of paragraphs starting with "I regret..." and ending with "I deeply regret...". (Read it here.)

Wonderful!

Earlier that day, taking a break from work, I clicked over to my beloved site: the WSJ and obviously this breach of security warranted even the prestigious WSJ to make a report of it: Hacker Breaks Into UCLA Database—University Warns That Personal Records For 800,000 Students, Staff Were Exposed. (View article here subscription required)

Great!

The first thing that I thought of was the NOC list, you know, from Mission: Impossible. (Westwood, home of UCLA, is pretty close to Hollywood). This higher ed "NOC list" contains personal info of "current and some former students, faculty and staff, some student applicants and some parents of students or..." on and on.

That being said, the list is out there, in the open. Some disreputable guy (assuming it's a guy) is floating around with my name, SSN, DOB, home addresses, and contact info. (Ok, not just me but 800,000 other folks out there.)

Like its physical relative I never thought much about identity theft. You know that Citigroup Thelma and Norma commercial on TV, well I used to find that funny...until now.

Wikipedia defined identity theft, or identity fraud, as "wrongfully impersonating someone, typically for financial gain either by exploiting the reputation of the subject person or stealing from him. A person usually steals an identity by using knowledge of personal information about the subject."

As if to reassure me, Wikipedia gives some examples of the serious consequences of id-theft:
"A classic example of an identity theft is where Bob gets a loan from Mary by pretending to be Peter"....yada yada yada and boom this: "This includes causing Peter to have a poor credit rating so that he cannot borrow money himself."

Interesting...

Did someone just hit the "panic" button on my key chain?

I'm worried and upset that UCLA, the place that started the internet—see APARNET—could have been so easily hacked into. (This incident took place between Oct. 05—Nov. 06!) And this communication, or apology letter, doesn't cut it at all. The letter did offer some practical ideas on a defense, although it involves dealing with the Big Three (Equifax, Experian, & Transunion.) Y-U-C-K-!-!-!

I used to find such comfort knowing that I was just a student-id-number at UCLA. So much for the warm blacket of anonymity.