UNM's carelessness puts employees at risk for fraud

Editor,

How dare the Human Resources Department and the UNM administration allow a consultant to leave UNM and New Mexico with potentially compromising personal information such as my name, e-mail address, home address, UNM identification number and net pay.

They provided this information for report development. Don't we have competent people employed at UNM to do this?

What were they thinking? Who is this consultant, and for what company does he or she work? I want to know so I can have my lawyer contact him or her individually and on the corporate level. Did UNM think that sending an e-mail to those affected was good enough and that it would reassure us? Did it not have the guts to contact us personally? UNM said it learned about the theft on Friday. Is that true? How long has this information been gone from campus? How long ago did this really happen?

Now I have something else to worry about. Though UNM states that no sensitive information was provided, does it think someone isn't smart enough to use what it provided to create a pseudo-me? Did the University really think that providing links to credit agencies in the e-mail would allow me to sleep any better, or that such measures are going to protect it from fallback if or when something happens?

Of course I'm going to notify the credit agencies of UNM's mistake. Of course I'm going to contact my attorney because of UNM's mistake. Can I bill the consultant's company or UNM for my attorney's time? UNM is responsible for this mess, not me.

Catherine Osborn

UNM staff