BRUNSWICK

Bowdoin College officials were notified on March 29 that 275 current and former employees had their W-2 and 1095-C tax information stolen by an unknown party.

According to college spokesman Scott Hood, no information on students had been accessed, only staff through the company Bowdoin contracts for payroll services, Ceridian.

“We don’t know how long it’s been going on,” Hood said.

According to Hood, the college was contacted by the Maine Revenue Service regarding a suspicious tax return filed with a valid W-2 provided by the college.

Once the college became aware of the situation, Hood said they contacted the Maine Attorney General’s Office and the Maine Revenue Service in order to take steps to protect the identities of their staff.

Staff members were told that if they see anything suspicious to notify the Internal Revenue Service and Free Trade Commission. Hood said the college is aware of individuals who have had their tax returns rejected by the IRS as a result of the data breach.

As a further step to protect its staff, Hood said the college is providing two years of credit monitoring at no cost to the staff through AllClear credit monitoring.

“It’s unfortunately something that’s happening with more frequency — it’s just something we all have to be careful about these days,” Hood said.

According to Hood, the same thing happened recently at Stanford University to about 3,700 staff.

Also, there was a failed attempt to access W-2 information from the Brunswick School Department.

Staff from the Brunswick finance department received a legitimate looking email request from someone posing as Superintendent Paul Perzanoski, requesting all Brunswick staff W-2s. Suspicious of the nature of the request, the staff sent the information minus Social Security numbers, making the data less valuable to scammers.