The Internet isn’t like paper. It doesn’t yellow with age, disintegrate or get lost. Somewhere, the information you may have posted–or may have been posted for you without your knowledge–is still available.

That’s what a Texas A&M professor discovered with an old Excel spread sheet that had been used to organize grades 10 years ago. The students’ names and partial Social Security numbers were still up there, ideal ingredients for ID theft. As this article in the university’s student newspaper pointed out, “The past was still available to be robbed by the present, and it took the University 10 years to realize it.”

Read more here.