Assets and IDs
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I actually was rather surprised by this link recently. It's about Universities grappling with identity theft, but it's expired? Meaning the article comes up and then jumps to another page. I'm not sure if this article got pulled for some reason or what, but a hint, click your stop button a few times as soon as it loads 🙂
If you can't get it, this appears to be the same article as ZDNet.
It's interesting to think that the amount of information at a college is attractive to identity theives, seeing as how most college students aren't that financially well off. But then think about how much credit is being extended to them. Quite a bit and keeping some of that information around for 3-4 years might not be a bad investment for a thief.
But it does bring to mind that this "asset", which is probably not that well protected given the budgets at many institutions, is a problem. Less so from a technical standpoint, at least to me, but more so from a human factor standpoint. How much money would it take for a student worker to copy a CD of SSNs and other info for someone. Especially if they could download the data from their work desk and then delete their name!
Information theft is going to be a big problem for a long time and while they not be the biggest problem, universities will certainly be a part of it. I wish I had a solution, but I don't.
But a start might be really limiting the access and amount of information that a single person can view. Especially students!
Steve Jones
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I'm a little confused about the "Especially students!" part here Steve.
1. Are you saying that students are more likely to be identity thieves or criminals in general? Is that your gut talking or are there some stats we can see on that?
2. Are you saying the article(s) you cited are implying that? Granted, I only read the one posted at ZDNet, but I didn't get that vibe off the article.
Please elaborate.
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I think in general companies (universities are essentially companies) need to be careful about the information they allow people access to. In general, a good rule of thumb is a "need to know" policy about information. Why would students NEED other students social security numbers or financial information? I understand the concept that they would be working for the school, but I find it hard to believe that any student/worker at a university would require such access.
As far as students being more likely, I am not sure that there will be many statistics pointing this out, but think about it. If I am a student at a university, who has little or no money do you not think it logical that I would be more likely to commit crimes like identity theft to earn more money than people who are not as poor as I am? If I am a professor, office employee, or staff member who makes decent money and has a lot to loose by getting caught stealing information, I think it less likely that I will commit the crime ( on account they I would have less of a reason to ). It is an unfortunate fact, and I am certainly not promoting the idea that all students are criminals, or even that a lot of students are criminals. To put it mildly, the poor are more often going to do things for money that the rich wouldn't even imagine doing!
As a final note, I don't think that too many people watch their pockets when the walk through a rich area of any given city, but if you go into the poorer regions, I am sure you check afterwards.
thanks,
aleksei
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Sorry, rereading it I realize that the "especially students" doesn't make as much sense now as it did yesterday
It seems to me that most of the problems with loss of information are still due to the human factor, not technology. The people that can hack into your databases at a company or university are few and far between. But the people that can pay someone to run a report and give it to you are very numerous. And most students I know are especially vulnerable since they are, in general, poor and could use some extra cash. And it seems that more and more people have fewer and fewer ethics.
Limiting record viewing to one record at a time is a good way to slow or limit the exposure of record theft.
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