Nearly 2,000 records from Chattanooga State Community College are missing and have been for several months after a contractor mishandled the paperwork, putting students at risk of identity theft, college officials said.
Parents and students who received letters from the school this month alerting them to the security breach say they are very concerned the lost documents will comprise their credit ratings.
“It is a bit disconcerting to think that your 20-year-old kid is going to have all their financial data compromised,” said James Herring, whose son, Matthew, is missing records from his 2007 enrollment at Chattanooga State.
“I think they are negligent for not telling us sooner,” he said.
All the documents were handled by a company that was investigated for dumping medical records, said Eva Lewis, a spokeswoman for Chattanooga State. When they found out about that incident, Chattanooga State officials retrieved the records from the business, which was supposed to be scanning papers, shredding them and creating electronic versions for the college to use, she said.
The documents contained students’ high school transcripts, home addresses, phone numbers and Social Security numbers, Ms. Lewis said.
“We thought we had retrieved our records,” she said. “Then in March of this year we were asked to pull someone’s records, but they were missing. There was a whole group missing.”
Since then, school officials haven’t been able to locate the owner of the business to find the documents, and its phone has been disconnected, she said.
“We don’t know where they are,” Ms. Lewis said. “We don’t know if they have been destroyed.”
She said college personnel are doing everything they can to safeguard student documents and will scan all future records themselves.