A Metro Detroit student signed up for a class and then got text messages showing pictures of documents containing her personal information.
It’s critical to protect your personal information. If you don’t, ID thieves can make their move and ruin your credit.
I warn you all the time about making sure you use safe, secure passwords, lock your credit, and keep an eye out for any issues.
That’s why this story is concerning: A local student reached out to me because the job training center she was enrolled at apparently didn’t secure her info.
Instead, she received screenshots of her Social Security number, driver’s license, and program registration.
You can imagine how shocking this was for her. Why wasn’t her information secured? What happened here? And how can she and the others who were affected protect themselves?
We’ll see you live at 5:15 p.m. for this Help Me Hank report in Detroit.
“DESC has been made aware that documents containing personal information were found in a dumpster outside a Detroit at Work career center operated by a subcontractor of DESC.
The security of personal information is among DESC’s highest priorities. That's why it has been our longstanding policy, enforceable through all of our third-party contracts, that any materials containing personal information must be shredded or otherwise destroyed prior to being discarded. This requirement is made clear in the contracts that we have with the contractors that operate our career center locations, including the center at issue today.
We will be working with that contractor to find out how this happened and to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. No other career center is impacted, but we will ensure that staff at all Detroit At Work career centers receive reminders of the training they receive regularly and a repeat of it in light of this current situation to mitigate the potential recurrence of any future data breaches of this kind.
We deeply regret any concern or upset this may have caused. While our internal investigation of this incident is just commencing, out of an abundance of caution, DESC has instructed the contractor at this location to provide one year of credit monitoring free of charge to any customers that we believe may have been impacted.”
Dana Williams, President and CEO, Detroit Employment Solutions Corporation