According to the Columbia homepage, those of you who’ve been sitting around trying to register for one of 200 available lottery seats to the Obama-McCain event will have until noon tomorrow to sit around some more. Best of luck!

This first issue of The Blue and White was made with Columbia’s newest inhabitants in mind.

Dearest overachievers: perhaps the humanities is not the way to go for that A+…

If you came to Columbia in search of fat cats, look no further.

They are at the top of student government and the campus music scene.  Take heed future presidents and rock stars.

For the strong and beautiful neighbors across Broadway, a conversation with your new president, maverick economist and baby expert.

Beware of documents named output.xls.

And finally, this is the very best of your prefrosh Facebook encounters.

Gather round Columbia, we heard a harrowing tale from SSN breach survivor John Davisson. It seems the free credit monitoring service that your administration has provided is giving identity thieves one more shot to steal your personal information if they were busy from February 2007 to May 2008.

“I called Identity Guard to activate my Columbia-bought-and-paid-for “CREDITPROTECTX®” service. After I gave the operator some basic info, she said she’d transfer me to their ‘Identity Verification Unit.’ I waited on hold for a couple of minutes, until I was suddenly patched through to two or three simultaneous conversations between other customers and operators. All but one dropped out quickly, allowing me to overhear the voice of another CREDITPROTECTX® prospect. I couldn’t make out what the operator was telling her, but within a few seconds, the caller rattled off her full name, phone number, home address, email address, and social security number. Then the line when dead.

In response to the week’s SSN shitstorm, it was quickly discovered that there had been two emails sent to the afflicted persons: It seemed that some of the luckier unlucky were offered two years of complimentary credit card monitoring service and the unluckiest unlucky were not. One Bwog operative fell into the latter category, so she telephoned the good folks at Student Services for some answers. Turns out, luck (or alumni vs. student status) had nothing to do with whether or not you were offered the service. Our operative returned to Bwog full of answers and hope:

“[According to Michael Novielli of  Student Auxiliary and Business Services], in order to be eligible for Identity Guard ‘the company requires that you have a valid U.S. Social Security Number and a U.S. mailing address.’

A-ha! And now here’s where the aforementioned hope comes in for alums/students outside of the US: Novielli also wrote: “If you indeed have both, please let me know and I’d be happy to add you to the list of individuals who will receive an access code granting them a two-year subscription to the service.”

Our operative summarizes: “So moral of the story: if you didn’t get the two year offer and really want it, bitch to Student Services (through the address that was included in Scott Wright’s email) and try to come up with a US mailing address that works for you. If the issue is that you don’t have a U.S. SSN, you shouldn’t be worried in the first place because what leaked is the wonderful fake SSN that Columbia made up for you. Ask, and ye shall receive.”

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.

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