(Memphis) The old Memphis City School District is blaming a technical error for a mistake that had students’ social security numbers, birth dates and medical histories posted online. It was all there for everyone to see.
We’ve learned that the children impacted attended Bruce Elementary School sometime in the past.
Memphis City School says it believes the information was posted online for six days.
One Memphis mother says her child went to school at Bruce Elementary four years ago, and his information was on there.
“That’s a lot of information to just be out there,” said Erica Woodard.
When Woodard says a lot of information, she means it. With one Google search of her name, she found all the information a criminal would need to steal her 12-year-old son’s identity.
“They have the children’s names, their socials, their mothers’ maiden names,” she said. “They have everything.”
She found her son’s info, as well as dozens of other children’s information, in a 38-page PDF file.
“It shows children in the second grade, third grade, fourth grade,” she said.
They are children who attended Bruce Elementary School in Midtown. The file includes their family member’s numbers and addresses, the children’s’ medical histories, and, at the top left of each page, each child’s social security number.
“Is there any reason this should be posted online?” asked reporter Sabrina Hall.
“Absolutely not. There was no password or anything,” said Woodard.
The old Memphis City School district says it looked into the issue and found the problem to be a technical error. The error was in a program normally password protected, meant for internal use only by school staff, but it was somehow made public.
MCS officials said they believe Bruce Elementary and the 38 pages are an isolated incident.
Woodard says the security lapse is enough to get all parents worried about their children’s financial futures.
“Seeing this you need to do credit checks on your children as well,” she said.
MCS says it has staff checking on all 250 schools to make sure this was just an isolated incident. It has fixed the problem with Bruce Elementary.
