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The Washington Post

How data breaches grew to massive proportions in 12 years

September 7, 2017 | Society

Some of the earliest data breaches in the United States, dating back to 2005, occurred at colleges.

The first happened at George Mason University in Fairfax in January 2005, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.

A hacker, who attacked the university's main identification server, compromised the names, pictures and social security numbers of about 32,000 students and staff.

Equifax, an Atlanta-based credit monitoring company, is the latest business to experience a large-scale hack.

The company said Thursday "criminals" exploited a U.S. website application between May and July of this year and accessed Social Security numbers and other sensitive information for more than 143 million Americans.

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