[caption id=”attachment_104984″ align=”aligncenter” width=”630″] (Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo)
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Just in case $1.3 trillion in student loan debt wasn’t already a scary enough premise, inspector general reports indicate that federal student loans also come with a high risk of personal data breaches for students.
This especially happens under the previous Federal Family Education Loan Program, Watchdog.org reported.
If you go into default on your student loans, the Federal Student Loan Administration turns over all of your data to a group of private companies to start collecting the debt. But those companies are not required to adhere to federal data security standards, Watchdog found.
A September Department of Education Inspector General report detailed the vulnerabilities students face under the current system. The report also noted that the administration has been ignoring warnings about these possible breaches since 2011 and continued to ignore all suggestions for improvement in the 2014 report.
Watchdog reached out to a spokesperson for the organization to see if they had any plans to change that in the new year.
“As of the date of the audit, there was no official plan to make sure that agencies adhere to FISMA (federal security) requirements,” the official said in an email.
Privacy and student advocates say they need to do more.
“Individuals turn over so much information. As the government contracts more and more out, it’s imperative that there are oversight mechanisms in place,” Khaliah Barnes, director of the Student Privacy Project and administrative law counsel for the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center, told Watchdog.org.
“Responsibility lies on whatever entity has been entrusted with the information. If they decide to contract out, they should be sure there’s an oversight mechanism in place to protect the information.”
