Discuss “Professor’s laptops stolen; contained unsecured student information”

The first weekend in September was notable for most students as it was the end of the first week of classes. For a small percentage of the student body population, it was the weekend that their social security numbers left campus, stored in the unencrypted files of two stolen laptop computers.

According to University Police reports filed on Sept. 2, the laptops were stolen from the office of a computer science professor in Wean Hall. The door is believed to have been locked and there were no signs of forced entry, according to case officer Lieutenant John Race of the Carnegie Mellon University Police.

A supplemental report filed on Sept. 7 concluded that although the professor typically set the door to lock automatically when pulled closed,...