The Illini Media Company released a statement on the computer breach that forced The Daily Illini to cancel one Thursday publication.

“As we announced Feb. 17, data servers owned by the Illini Media Co., which The Daily Illini, WPGU-FM, The Illio, buzz and Technograph, and that previously operated the Illini Media Tech Center, were hacked twice in the last two months. These hacks potentially exposed personal confidential information about current and past IMC student and non-student employees.

We have reported these incidents to federal law enforcement and state officials are working on several fronts to retrieve and restore all of our data files.

The potentially vulnerable files center on payroll, so only data about IMC employees who received pay as students since 2003 or as non-student staff since 1999 could be compromised, if at all.

A 2017 Illinois law requires that Illinois residents who may be affected by a data breach are to be notified by the keeper of the files that were breached, so out of caution, we are posting this notice.

We do not know with any degree of certainty if the files were actually stolen or have been exposed to unlawful use. We encourage you, however, to learn more about potential identity theft at the “Protecting Consumers” webpage of the Illinois Attorney General, which also links off to several informative and helpful websites. Go to www.IllinoisAttorneyGeneral.gov/consumers/hotline.html.

We will keep the public informed about our status as the situation resolves.

Thank you for your forbearance during this difficult situation.”

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