LOS ANGELES, CA (AP) -- The FBI searched today for whoever hacked into a UCLA database containing information about some 800,000 former and current students and staff members, applicants and the parents of some applicants.
UCLA alerted the 800,000 yesterday that their names and some of their personal information were contained in what a university statement called ``a restricted database that was illegally and fraudulently accessed by a sophisticated computer hacker.''
Letters and e-mails to those potentially affected were sent yesterday, signed by acting Chancellor Norman Abrams.
The FBI said it was investigating the incident.
UCLA said the hacking took place from October of last year until this November. Officials said that although hackers obtained some Social Security numbers, the university had no evidence that any of the information was misused.
By 5 p.m. yesterday, 25 call centers around the country had received about 8,450 calls, many from people who had not received notification from UCLA but had reason to believe they might be part of the affected group, the Los Angeles Times reported.
UCLA has established a Web site to provide information and answer questions about the incident at http://www.identityalert.ucla.edu and a toll- free call center, (877) 533-8082. By 2 p.m. yesterday, the Web site had received 10,000 individual visitors, according to the newspaper.
''It goes without saying that most people are expressing concern," UCLA spokesman Phil Hampton told The Times.
UCLA's action in notifying all those in the database was applauded by privacy advocates, including Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a San Diego-based nonprofit consumer information and advocacy group, The Times reported.
Givens urged those who believe their information may have been compromised to contact credit reporting agencies and ask that a free 90-day fraud alert be placed in their records, according to The Times. She suggested people consider freezing their credit reports, which costs $10 per credit bureau.
Her group's Web site, http://www.privacyrights.org contains other tips, as does the Web site for the state's Office of Privacy Protection, http://www.privacyprotection.ca.gov .
Mari Nicholson, a 2003 UCLA graduate among those who received e-mail notification from UCLA yesterday, told The Times she discovered problems with her credit file in October when she tried to apply for a federal student loan.
She found that someone had taken out a $24,500 car loan and made other purchases in her name using identifying details about her, including an old address from her student days at UCLA, she told the newspaper.
When she saw the UCLA e-mail, it all seemed to make sense. ``It may or may not be related, but it would sure solve a lot of the mystery of it," she told The Times.
Now a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, the 25- year-old Nicholson told The Times she has spent hours nearly every day trying to straighten out her badly tarnished credit file.
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