Oakland Unified School District Data Breach (2020)

In Oakland, the district suffered a more widespread breach of student privacy after administrators inadvertently publicly posted hundreds of access codes and passwords used by teachers and students to log into online classrooms and video conferences. The codes allowed anyone with a Gmail account to join the Google Classroom sites set up by teachers across the district, allowing access to students’ full names as well as their comments posted in the class. The documents also included the time, access codes and passwords for Zoom video conferences with teachers and students. In Oakland, district officials were unaware of the exposure of the information until The Chronicle notified them of easily found information and access to the sites.