University of Central Florida (UCF) employees and students were recent victims of a data breach. Administrators at the school announced that in addition to the 600 student athletes that had information stolen in January, another 63,000 are now part of an obviously much greater incident.
Information retrieved by hackers include social security numbers. Unfortunately, unlike payment card numbers, these cannot easily be changed. Therefore, anyone who receives confirmation from the university that he or she was part of this breach should be diligent about checking credit reports for the next two years.
Each of the three major credit bureaus have credit reports on everyone in the U.S. who has credit of any kind. Order a free one from one of them every four months and keep better track of potential fraudulent use of your social security number. If anything is incorrect, including something that may seem trivial like a typo in a former address, get it taken care of with the bureau.
If you don’t plan to obtain credit in the near term, consider putting a credit freeze on your reports. This will prevent anyone from getting them without your authorization. You can remove the freeze temporarily if you are planning to get credit of some type. Check with Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion for more details on how to do this.
The information stolen in this case goes back to the 1980s. Therefore, even if you were not recently associated to the school, you still may be affected. The university is sending out letters to those were victims in this, which should arrive in the mail in the next few weeks.
No grades, financial information, or medical records were part of this data breach. The UCF administration is offering one year of free credit monitoring services as well. Take advantage of this, whenever it is offered. It will not stop someone from accessing your credit, but it will alert you if it happens. That is worth the effort to go to the UCF website and sign up.
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