Personal information about all 5,247 students of the University of Illinois was accidentally sent as an email attachment in a message to 714 engineering students on Friday. The spreadsheet contained each the name, e-mail address, major, gender, race and ethnicity, class, date admitted, spring 2007 grade point average, cumulative GPA, plus local address and phone number for each student. Fortunately, social security numbers and university identification numbers were not included.
"It was a mistake, an accident. It was completely unintentional," said UI spokeswoman Robin Kaler to the News-Gazette.
"A College of Engineering staff person sent a mass e-mail at 7:51 a.m. on Friday to all electrical and computer engineering students. The note was to inform the 714 students about a new class on Lego robotics.
"But the person who sent the mass e-mail attached a spreadsheet containing information on all 5,247 students in the college. ...
"Kaler said the staff person had used the spreadsheet to gather the e-mail addresses of the students.
"As soon as the person realized what had happened, they went immediately to the associate dean," Kaler said.
"At 10:08 a.m. the staff member sent students a follow-up e-mail asking the recipients to delete the file. The university's central administration was also notified."

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