The breach affected nearly 4,000 former students who graduated before 1985 and requested copies of their transcripts. In addition to social security numbers, names, addresses, and phone numbers were emailed to an unidentified individual who notified the university about the mistake.
“Texas A&M University, as do all institutions of higher education, collects and stores a wide variety of personal information from students, alumni, faculty, staff and customers. We treat this personal information with the utmost care and diligence, but there is always the possibility of human error, and, regrettably, it occurred in this instance", said Pierce Cantrell, associate provost for information technology at Texas A&M, in a statement.
"Even though we believe this incident puts these former students at low risk of identity theft, we will notify those individuals affected, as required by university rules and state laws. We deeply regret this happened, and have taken immediate action to restrict access to this file", he said.