OTTAWA, ON. (NEWS1130) – The federal government says it has lost the personal information of over half a million student loan borrowers. It happened about a month ago, but the feds are only now releasing the information.

It affects people who borrowed between 2000 and 2006.

Adam Awad with the Canadian Federation of Students says the size of the data loss is surprising. “It seems obvious that information on 586,000 people should not be kept on a portable, external hard drive that can walk away at any moment.”

The missing files contained names, birthdates, social insurance numbers and addresses, but not banking information. Both the RCMP and the privacy commissioner are looking into what happened.

This is not the first time Human Resources and Skills Development Canada has lost important information. In November, it lost a USB key containing the personal information of about 5,000 Canadians.