Hard drive with personal info on 3.4 million B.C. and Yukon students lost

VICTORIA – The B.C. government says a hard drive containing personal information and student records of 3.4 million residents in British Columbia and Yukon has been lost.

Technology Minister Amrik Virk says the unencrypted data from 1986 to 2009 also includes information about children in care, teacher retirement and graduation dates for cancer survivors.

Virk says the government believes the risk to people is low, but it has launched a review to determine everything possible is being done to prevent privacy breaches.

The minister says the hard drive also contains decades worth of names, grades, postal codes and personal education numbers.

The Education Ministry discovered the drive was lost when it reviewed records to ensure compliance with data-storage standards.

Virk says residents can call Service B.C. to find out if their information was on the drive.