Nelnet said a tape containing personal information got lost in the hands of UPS. About 188,000 customers who used Nelnet services between November of 2002 and May of 2006 could be affected. "Nelnet and UPS are trying to figure out how the tape was lost. They said they know the package came out of Aurora, Colorado, but it never made it to its destination."

The Identity Theft Guru says this is no big shocker.

Let's see... you take an average UPS worker making $35,000/year, and give him 180,000 people's information. If he knows what to do with that information, it can easily net him $2/name on any of the online boards where people buy and sell information. $360,000 for one missing package? Sounds like a pretty good trade-off to the average middle class UPS worker.

"Nelnet has already sent a letter out to the thousands of customers with information on the tape. They are currently changing its system to encrypted electronic transmission. UPS said it is possible that the package is still in the UPS network. The personal information includes Social Security numbers that were on the Nelnet computer data tape the was lost. "The company sends out 15 million packages a day. Unfortunately, we lost this one. That's extremely rare for us," said UPS spokeswoman Lynnette McIntire."

"We don't believe information on this tape has been acquired by any sort of unauthorized person or that the information has been accessed," said Ben Kiser, Nelnet spokesman."

Well Mr. Kiser, that doesn't make anyone feel more secure. But it shouldn't really. Their information has probably already been compromised in any of the other reported data breaches in the past 2 years that have resulted in over 80 million pieces of compromised information.

Carrie Roll, a college student at the University of Colorado at Boulder who could be affected by this latest data compromise, said "If anybody thinks their information hasn't been stolen yet, then they're pretty naive. Your information is gone, and it's just a matter of time until someone decides to use it."

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