H/T Bat for this post. It just goes on and on and on……..
Bat’s comments on this article:

How many times does it need to happen? Folks, you
cannot trust the government or any entities with your
personal information and no oversight! Someone
*always* abuses it eventually. Similarly,
corporations cannot be trusted to act in the public
interest without oversight and regulation. Many
countries have a Department of Privacy or something
similar, and we need the same. Human beings are
commodities to these people.

Some lending companies with access to a national database that contains confidential information on tens of millions of student borrowers have repeatedly searched it in ways that violate federal rules, raising alarms about data mining and abuse of privacy, government and university officials said.

The improper searching has grown so pervasive that officials said the Education Department is considering a temporary shutdown of the government-run database to review access policies and tighten security. Some worry that businesses are trolling for marketing data they can use to bombard students with mass mailings or other solicitations.

Students’ Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, birth dates and sensitive financial information such as loan balances are in the database, which contains 60 million student records and is covered by federal privacy laws. “We are just in shock that student data could be compromised like this,” said Nancy Hoover, director of financial aid at Denison University in Ohio.

Continue reading at the Washington Post