Identity theft is one of the fastest growing and most damaging crimes when it comes to your finances. Recently 29-Eyewitness News got a letter from employees of the McFarland Unified School District telling us about a security breech releasing confidential information. 29-Eyewitness News went to the district to find out what is being done and how employees can protect themselves.

Employees received a letter from the district warning them about a leak of employee names and social security numbers. In the letter Employees are directed to contact one of 3 credit reporting websites, and asks they place a fraud alert on their credit reports. And while interoffice memo's are often ignored, we wanted to know if employees are taking the notice seriously and if the district is doing anything avoid future leaks.

29-Eyewitness News went to the district to find out who is responsible for the leak and how it happened. They tell us they don't believe the leak was a malicious act, that an ex-employee had personal information from a previous project stored on a special drive that accidentally got dumped into a shared file. From that shared folder it went to the Internet leaking personal information.

Still we wanted to know what the district plans to do to increase security. McFarland Unified School District representative Candy Clark says any information downloaded about employees is stored safely and anything on paper is shredded immediately.

It's important to note that this type of situation can happen to any business at any time so make sure personal information is store securely. Since the breech the district had one employee contact them about a possible problem with their bank. However, the district says they believe it to be coincidental with the breech because no financial information was released.