There is never a good explanation for something like this.
From Hawaii Reporter:
The year-long public exposure of personal information belonging to 40,000 University of Hawaii alumni “could have been prevented†if the university had taken “some fairly simple†data protection measures, said the man who discovered the security breach.
Aaron Titus, Privacy Director at Liberty Coalition, a Washington D.C., non-profit agency, said he found personal data on 40,000 students who attended UH between 1990 to 1998 and in 2001 by performing some “advanced Google searches†and “thinking like an id thief.â€
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