Florida's Department of Education (FLDOE) said on Thursday that a breach of its Florida Student Financial Aid website exposed data on nearly 5 million people who applied for aid, The Record reported. The department said it learned of the breach on October 19. The exposed data includes names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, genders, birth dates and Social Security numbers. The site is offline.
FLDOE said the incident is contained and was reported to the state attorney general. The Florida Digital Service and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement are helping with the response. Aid payments, tuition, scholarships, grants and loans are not affected, it said. Its list names the types of data exposed. It does not say every record held every type. The department would not say how the breach happened or who did it. It told affected people to watch their credit reports and financial accounts.
Name, birth date and Social Security number together are what identity thieves need to open accounts. That is an outside reading, not the department's claim. The department has not said whether the data sat in one database. Budget signers can ask what identity data their own systems collect, who can reach it, and how long it is kept.