UK’s Pearson notifies thousands of US students of data breach

Reuters: British education company Pearson PLC last week said it has notified customers of a data breach that resulted in unauthorised access to about 13,000 school and university accounts, mainly in the United States.

The exposed data was limited to first names, last names, and in some instances dates of birth as well as email addresses, the company said.

 “While we have no evidence that this information has been misused, we have notified the affected customers as a precaution,” the company said in an emailed statement, adding that the vulnerability leading to the incident has been fixed.

The Wall Street Journal had earlier reported that Pearson was notified about the data incident by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in March.

The FBI did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.