Spamzy

Test-preparatory firm The Princeton Review accidentally published the personal data and standardized test scores of tens of thousands of Florida students online, “where they were available for seven weeks,” says The New York Times.

A security hole, “allowed anyone to type in a relatively simple Web address and have unfettered access to hundreds of files on the company’s computer network, including educational materials and internal communications,” says the story, going on:

Another test-preparatory company said it stumbled on the files while doing competitive research. This company provided The New York Times with the Web address of the internal files on the condition that it not be named. The Times informed the Princeton Review of the problem on Monday, and the company promptly shut off access to that portion of its site.

One file on the site contained information on about 34,000 students in the public schools in Sarasota, Fla., where the Princeton Review was hired to build an online tool to help the county measure students’ academic progress. The file included the students’ birthdays and ethnicities, whether they had learning disabilities, whether English was their second language, and their level of performance on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which is given to students in grades 3 to 11.

Another folder contained dozens of files with names and birth dates for 74,000 students in the school system of Fairfax County, Va., which had hired the Princeton Review to measure and improve student performance.

According to the New York Times, The Princeton Review said student information should have been protected by a password, but the protection was, “most likely lost when the company moved its site to a new Internet provider in late June”.

It’s now looking into how many people might have accessed the files, some of which could be found through search engines,” adds the story.

Go here to read the rest:
Princeton Review test scores online