Va. education department: Personal data of 100,000 students is missing

A flash drive containing personal information for about 100,000 former adult education students has been lost, and now the Virginia Department of Education is trying to notify all those affected.

The DOE is mailing letters to 77,577 former adult education students for whom the department has addresses.

Education department employees are also trying to notify another 25,693 former adult education students whose addresses are not known. They are asking that people who do not receive a letter, but who finished an adult education course between April 1, 2007, and June 30, 2009, or who passed a high school equivalency test between January 1, 2001, and June 30, 2009, call the department at 877-347-5224 for more information.

The flash drive, which contains names, social security numbers and other personal information for students, went missing after a Sept. 21 meeting at the state education department offices, according to department spokesman Charles Pyle.

The letters, which were mailed Monday, advise people of the loss and steps they can take to protect from identity theft.

The flash drive went missing after a meeting between representatives from Virginia Tech's Center for Assessment, Evaluation and Educational Programming and staff from the state's adult education office.

The state contracts with Tech's center for federally mandated research.

During that meeting, the flash drive was handed over by an employee of the adult education office to a representative of the center, according to Pyle.

"Contrary to department policy, the data on the flash drive were not encrypted," he said.

The Tech employee informed the adult education office Sept. 22 that the flash drive was lost and that efforts to find it were unsuccessful.

"Protecting the privacy of students is a solemn obligation, and the Virginia Department of Education has policies and secure systems to safeguard data and prevent the loss or misuse of personal information," Superintendent of Public Instruction Patricia I. Wright wrote in a news release today. "However, no policy or system is immune from human error."

Wright stressed that the department has no information to indicate that the device has been found or that any of the information on it has been accessed.

If you believe you are one of the students affected, contact staff writer Olympia Meola at (804) 649-6812 or .