The New York State Education Department sent out the following notice to all principals in the state:

The Department has learned that Edmodo, Inc., a learning platform used by many schools and districts across the State, has suffered a security incident that potentially affects the accounts of Edmodo users. Edmodo’s platform was hacked and the user names, email addresses, and hashed passwords of about millions of account users were acquired by an unknown, unauthorized third party.

The Department is using this communication to ask districts to instruct their Edmodo users to reset their passwords immediately, and to warn them to be vigilant about phishing attacks that may result from this incident. Users who use the same password on multiple sites should be encouraged to change them on those sites as well. To reset a password on the Edmodo platform, users should: 1. Go to the Edmodo website and log in to your account. 2. Click on the “Password Reset” link in the notice at the top of the page. 3. Enter their current password, and then create a new password. Questions about resetting passwords should be directed to the Support Help Center on the Edmodo website.

Please remember that any unauthorized access to a student’s personally identifiable information should be reported to SED’s Chief Privacy Officer at Privacy@NYSED.gov.

Presumably someone will find a fix and patch whatever went wrong.

Given the constant hacking these days, we can safely assume that someone will hack into the system again. And again. And again.

The massive hack by a group who call themselves “The Shadow Brokers” disrupted computers all over the world, locked them up, and unlocked them for ransom money.

Nothing online is secure.

It is time to start thinking seriously about solutions to the invasion of privacy. Better security is one solution, but for every new lock, there is a better lock-picker. Think about it.