For all our parents with Year 3 to Year 6 children attending Forest Crescent Primary School.
You may have heard recent media reports regarding a data breach involving Mathspace, the online mathematics learning platform used by students in Years 3–6 at Forest Crescent Primary School.
Mathspace has advised that unauthorised parties accessed an internal reporting system between 10 August and 27 August. The company has reported that 1,079,819 users across Australia and New Zealand, including students, school staff and some parents, were affected.
What information may have been accessed?
According to Mathspace, the information exported by the unauthorised parties may have included:
- User ID and username
- First and last name
- Email address
- Country and time zone
- User type
- Email verification status
- Last active and last login dates
- Date the account was created
Mathspace has advised that not every affected user had all of these fields exposed.
Importantly, Mathspace has confirmed that the breach did not expose:
- Academic records or learning activities
- Student results or assessment records
- Passwords or password hashes
- Authentication tokens
- Single Sign-On (SSO) credentials
- API credentials
Mathspace has also stated that the exposed data did not include records linking individual user accounts to their schools.
Information specific to Forest Crescent Primary School
Parents may receive, or may already have received, an email directly from Mathspace advising them of the breach.
Mathspace has indicated that, in some schools, parent or guardian email addresses may have been uploaded and associated with student accounts.
Forest Crescent Primary School has never uploaded parent or guardian email addresses into students’ Mathspace account details. You may receive a Mathspace email from another school if they have uploaded parent/guardian email details relevant to another of your child’s accounts.
What should families do?
Mathspace recommends that users:
- Be cautious of unexpected emails, text messages or other communications and independently verify anything that appears suspicious.
- Never provide passwords or verification codes in response to an unexpected message.
- Use a unique password for each online account.
- Monitor accounts for unusual or unexpected activity.
While Mathspace has confirmed that passwords were not exposed in this incident, these are sensible precautions whenever personal information such as names or email addresses may have been involved in a data breach.
Mathspace has advised that anyone who receives a suspicious message or notices unusual activity relating to their Mathspace account should report it directly to Mathspace.
Mathspace also urged people to watch for unusual account activity, and if anybody wanted to report suspicious messages or activity, they should contact data-breach-response@mathspace.co
We understand that reports of data breaches can be concerning for families. We are providing this information so that parents and carers are aware of the incident, understand what information Mathspace has reported as being affected, and know what precautions are recommended.
More Information About the Data Breach from Mathspace
FCPS
Forest Crescent PrimaryThe above information is provided by the Forest Crescent Primary School administration and staff to share, inform and celebrate our school community.
