Data breach exposes records of 2.5 million student loan borrowers (2024)

FAQs

Data breach exposes records of 2.5 million student loan borrowers? ›

The student loan servicer then initiated an investigation led by third-party cyber forensics professionals into the vulnerability. The investigation discovered that personal identifiable information (PII) of 2.5 million student loan borrowers was accessible by an unknown actor who gained access to the network.

A data breach at Nelnet may have exposed the data of about 2.5 million student loan borrowers serviced by Edfinancial Services and Oklahoma Student Loan Authority.

An investigation determined that intruders accessed student loan account registration information between June and July 2022. The stolen data includes names, addresses, emails, phone numbers and social security numbers for 2,501,324 student loan account holders.

Approximately 2.2 million affected borrowers are assigned to Edfinancial, while approximately 250,000 are assigned to OSLA. Of the accounts serviced by OSLA, 1,477 borrowers live in Oklahoma. If your account has been affected, you will receive a letter with more information.

A data breach can result in the leak of several types of information: Financial data—such as credit card numbers, bank details, tax forms, invoices, financial statements.

Information accessed in the breach included first and last names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some instances, driver's license numbers for an estimated 143 million Americans, based on Equifax' analysis. Information on almost 14 million British residents was also compromised.

Contact your local police department and tell them that your identity has been stolen and that you'd like to file a report. They should provide you with a copy of the report when it's done, but if they don't offer you one, be sure to ask for it.

Two groups of Republican-led states have sued President Joe Biden over the student loan repayment plan he launched last year, arguing he's once again overstepping his authority to cancel student debt.

Today's student debt problem can be traced to the 1960s, when California Gov. Ronald Reagan cut higher education funding and raised tuition. Once considered a public good, higher education became seen nationwide as a private commodity.

What qualifies as a data breach? ›

A data breach is any security incident in which unauthorized parties gain access to sensitive or confidential information, including personal data (Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, healthcare data) or corporate data (customer data records, intellectual property, financial information).

The most common types of data breaches are: Ransomware. Phishing. Malware.

Examples of personal data breaches include: Human error, for example an email attachment containing personal data being sent to the incorrect recipient or records being deleted accidentally. Sharing of passwords or other credentials with third parties.

EdFinancial Services is one of several loan servicers contracted by the federal government to manage billing for federal student loans. Based in Knoxville, Tennessee, EdFinancial has been in the student loan business for over three decades and services loans for over five million borrowers as of August 2023.

According to the Attorney General of Massachusetts, Sallie Mae reported a data breach after learning that an unauthorized party may have been able to gain access to confidential consumer information. The company launched an investigation and were able to confirm the breach.

The Department of Education announced in April 2023 that it signed new contracts with five student loan servicers. OSLA's contract was not renewed in the servicer overhaul, so it will only continue servicing loans through December 2024.

Sometime in June, unidentified intruders compromised Nelnet Servicing and stayed on its systems until July 22. The hackers compromised the company's network, likely after exploiting a vulnerability. About 2,501,324 individuals have been impacted by the breach.

In September of 2017, Equifax announced a data breach that exposed the personal information of 147 million people.

The largest reported data leakage as of January 2024 was the Cam4 data breach in March 2020, which exposed more than 10 billion data records. The second-largest data breach in history so far, the Yahoo data breach, occurred in 2013.