Cal Poly Pomona confirms 5-year privacy breach

POMONA, Calif.—Cal Poly Pomona says personal information for hundreds of student applicants was made available on the Internet for five years.University officials say Social Security numbers, home addresses and other information for as many as 355 applicants were inadvertently left in a publicly accessible computer folder from 2003 until November 2008.

A former applicant found the mistake while searching for information on himself.

The school says even after the data was removed from a university server, some of it remained available through Google until a few months ago.

Last week, the school contacted Google to purge the information and sent letters to the applicants, urging them to contact credit reporting agencies.