347 student social security numbers shared by accident

A list of 347 students names and social security numbers were accidentally sent out via email to 1,033 people Friday.

The list was sent accidentally by a Utah State University employee to the wrong list-serve. Instead of the intended destination, the email was received by student veterans, whose emails were on the list-serve. The students whose social security numbers were disclosed were also veterans.

“The short of it is it just hit the wrong list-serve,” said Tim Vitale, executive director for public relations and marketing at USU. “It was just an unfortunate mistake that should not have happened and that we are trying to resolve as quickly as possible and mitigate any problems that might arise.”

The university emailed the affected students notifying them of the mishap and apologizing. USU also offered to enroll the students in a credit-monitoring program for the next year for free.

The mistake was described as “human error.”

“It was a personnel incident, meaning one person disclosed wrong information inappropriately or accidentally,” Vitale said. “No one hacked our system. It was not a penetration of our environment. So in other words we do know how it happened, and it was not something that was wide-scoped. So we know exactly what happened.”

The university is reviewing procedures and has changed certain processes in light of the incident.

— dahdahjm@gmail.com