In response to a goofy mix-up in which five thousand of your names and social security numbers were posted on the Internet for 16 months, one student wishing to remain anonymous has posted a statement of disapproval/demand for change on Petition Online.

Students bothered by the incident (we hear there may be a few of you) are encouraged to sign the petition, which will later be emailed to Scott Wright, he of yesterday's fateful email, Elizabeth J. Keefer (CU General Counsel), and Joseph A. Ienuso (Executive VP, Facilities).

One recent grad forwarded Bwog the following email, which contains some bad news for the unluckiest 5,000 of you. Apparently, housing information that included names and social security numbers was accidentally posted online by a former student employee in February 2007.

Housing & Dining is very sorry, and has even bought you and your probably-stolen social security numbers an apology gift to make it up to you: "As an additional precaution, Columbia has arranged for you to receive a free two-year subscription to a credit monitoring service, Identity Guard CreditProtectX3SM. This service will provide you with a copy of your credit report, monitor your credit files at all three major credit bureaus and notify you of certain suspicious activities that could indicate identity theft."

Full email after the jump.

UPDATE 11:32 PM: One Bwog operative calling himself "Person who's SSN was exposed" has located via Google cache the Excel document that used to contain the SSNs and names in question. According to the aforementioned operative, the Excel document was created apparently in relation to "a HW for CS4733, aka 'Computational Aspects of Robotics.'" Also, the Spec has published the story.

UPDATE 11:11 AM: A Bwog writer and SSN victim just called Student Services and the email is not, in fact, a scam. Sorry folks.