<p>What will become of SBU’s future because of this? Will they get sued and become bankrupt? I don’t see how 90K people can all let it go by…I’ve heard of class-action suits…</p>
<p>Will the STUDENTS who had nothing to do with it feel the aftermath of this? Should I be worried of problems in the future as a student?</p>
<p>BTW: I wasn’t one of the people who had their info exposed. It seems like 90K is a lot of people, how many have even gone to Stony Brook since the 1950’s? (rough estimate?)</p>
<p>Maybe I’m a little naive, but I think that the suits are a little excessive. Apparently the data wasn’t (most likely) even accessed, plus, SB actually disclosed the leak…something which I feel not everyone would do.</p>
<p>Plus, this is just human error. When I was in 10th grade I found that my HS’s website was wide open to any change. I found this just by looking at the source code for one page, and when I hit save to save it to my computer, I realized that it saved to the website itself. Even grades could be changed. I said something and it was fixed. End of story.</p>
<p>SB is paying for fraud alerts, so that’s awesome, but seriously…do people have to be this paranoid?</p>
<p>A big class-action lawsuit comprised of people who weren’t damaged at all won’t go much of anywhere. Even if it did, the payouts would be minimal.</p>
<p>On the other hand, yesterday I talked to someone who actually may have suffered damages from the disclosure–people with damages (and there may be a few, but probably not many; that person was the first I’d heard of) might be looking at decent settlements, but there’s no way they’d be enough to bankrupt the university. With all the money and prestige the fruits of our research bring the state, there’s absolutely no way SBU wouldn’t get bailed out in even a worst case scenario (and I don’t think needing to be bailed out is likely in the slightest).</p>
<p>It’s too bad Stony Brook is being dumb about dealing with the aftermath, though. Not telling people for weeks after the leak was discovered? Awful. Only paying for three months of fraud monitoring when a year is the standard in these cases? Ridiculously stupid. Social security numbers were leaked, and it’s not like those ever change! A year at the minimum would have been the decent thing to do, but since this crap is coming from on-high… well, no one really expects any better from dear old Shirley and her ilk.</p>
<p>In the end, it’s an unfortunate situation but I can’t imagine it having any real impact on the university’s future.</p>