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Information on 350 students' tuition balances accidentally released in batch email

The email came from the Office of the University Cashier just before 9 a.m. reminding students with due balances to pay in order to register for spring classes. Along with the students’ tuition balance, first names and PIDs were listed in the email.

University Cashier DeAhn Baucom said in a statement that the student specific information was not supposed to be sent out.

“Each email message was intended to be sent only to the appropriate individual, but instead the emails were sent as a batch and each student received multiple messages corresponding to other students,” Baucom said.

Soon after the first email was sent, a recall message was sent from the Office of University Cashier to affected students to prevent students who didn’t open the message from seeing it.

Jonathan Jones, director of the North Carolina Open Government Coalition, said for this leaked information to violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, one would have to argue students could be identified and the information disclosed was an education record. He said FERPA provides students a path to access their own information and protects the inappropriate disclosure of education and discipline records related to students.

“The names by themselves would not be (a FERPA violation),” Jones said. “Even if there was first and last name and the PID number, I don’t think that would be either because I don’t think your PID number is an education record — it’s an identifier, it’s not something that really relates to your education.”

Collections Manager for the University Cashier Keyana Kimbrough sent out an apology email to all 361 students letting them know some of their account information was inadvertently disclosed to other students.

“Although we acknowledge that this message contained personal information including your first name, PID number and balance owed, we do want to assure you that the email message did not contain your last name, Social Security number or other identifying information,” Kimbrough said in the email.

Jones said he wasn’t sure if the tuition a student owes would be an education record.

“...If there is somebody that has a really unique name and they’re going to be the only person on UNC’s campus that has that first name, then I think perhaps there is a FERPA violation when you disclose the amount of money owed,” he said. “But that is contingent on the idea that the amount of money they owe is an education record and not some other type of record.”

Baucom’s statement asked affected students to contact the Cashier’s Office if they have any questions.

“We take very seriously our responsibility to protect our students’ privacy, and we are working hard to review this situation and to identify the circumstances that caused this incident, so that it does not occur again in the future,” she said.

@Sofia_Edelman

university@dailytarheel.com

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