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By Brittany Fugate, CEO at Cenetric
Identity theft is always serious business, but it’s taking an unexpected turn lately: student financial aid.
The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is widely used by prospective students to determine if they qualify for financial aid for college or career school. Through the FAFSA, students can apply for grants, scholarships, work-study programs, and loans.
Bad actors are after those aid dollars, filing false applications in other people’s names to obtain funds. They even enroll as “ghost students” at colleges and universities to maintain attendance requirements to keep the funds, using bots to mimic real students.
Ghost students take aid and class space from real students
California community colleges estimate that 20% of their applications in 2023 were fake, leading to inflated class sizes and wreaking havoc on scheduling. These fake students take up spots that could go to real people and steal federal aid from students who need it to fund their secondary education.
According to EdTech Magazine, these ghost students take up precious IT resources as well. School IT teams spend their time investigating these fraud cases, and fake students who gain access to school email accounts and networks create more security risks for IT teams to manage.
Photo credit: iStock
Preventing student identity theft
If you have (or are) a student enrolling in college or trade school, you should keep an eye out for any suspicious emails, letters or even checks that show up. Someone else using your student’s Social Security Number can prevent them from enrolling or getting financial aid.
If you suspect identity theft, your students should freeze their credit immediately. If they’re under 18, you will have to do it as their parent or guardian. Help them enroll in an identity protection program that will alert them to any other instances of fraud using their data.
Cenetric can help universities protect themselves and their students
If you’re on a university IT staff, you’re probably all too familiar with this phenomenon. The added workload of finding and removing ghost students is likely clogging your to-do list and taking away from more strategic work.
You also don’t want to contribute to identity theft by making things any easier for bad actors. That means adhering to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) and having the appropriate cybersecurity measures in place to protect students’ Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
Cenetric helps schools and universities protect themselves from cybercrime and ensure they follow the best practices to fight issues like ransomware and phishing that contribute to identity theft. Our experts can help you make sure you’re GLBA compliant and ready for any audit.
Whatever type of business you are, Cenetric has the experience to get — and keep — you covered when it comes to cybersecurity. Let’s talk about your needs today.