Mississippi joins list of colleges leaking data

Ray was just surfing the Internet looking for information on an old friend. Instead, he found a gold mine for identity thieves -- a Web site full of documents listing hundreds of student names and Social Security Numbers. It was posted right on the University of Mississippi's Web site, there for anyone to see.

"I was just looking up an old college friend when I stumbled on this page," said Ray, who requested his last name be withheld. "I know this isn't something I should be able to see." 

There were about 20 documents listing fraternity and sorority members. Some had as few as five entries. The list of Phi Mu members included 189 names and Social Security Numbers.  In all, about 700 students were listed in the documents.

After a call from MSNBC.com, the university shut down access to the Web page Wednesday. Jeff Alford, assistant vice chancellor for university relations, said the files had likely been exposed on the Internet since 2003.

The information was published to the Internet by a former staff member in the dean of students office as a backup file, Alford said.  The staff member no longer works at the university, he said.

"It was information he had access to for his job," Alford said.  "For some reason, he saved the information as a backup file on the university (Web) server. It is a clear violation of our privacy policy, and a serious violation."

The backup file was created in August 2003, he said, and has likely been exposed to Internet users since then.

It would be difficult for users of the University Mississippi's Web site to stumble across the information as it was posted to an obscure address and not linked from anywhere else. But because it had been on the Internet so long, the information had been indexed by the major search engines. Anyone searching for one of the victim's names using Google or Yahoo would have been served a link to the Web page, including the Social Security Numbers.

"We take this very seriously," Alford said. "We will continue to investigate."

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