A recently discovered cache of the names and Boston University identification numbers of over 2,000 students who signed the online version of a petition aiming to prevent the revision of the print quota raises questions of where to draw the line between administrative responsibility and student responsibility regarding privacy. Though the students who signed the online petition were not forced to give their ID numbers, they likely didn’t anticipate that their IDs would end up posted on the Internet, where literally anyone could find them.
It’s not a new concept that this generation has a whole new level of personal privacy to keep in check. Identity theft is easier than ever, as the Internet becomes more and more accessible and the world gets smaller as a consequence. Without becoming paranoid, those who are the most wired ‘- those whose email accounts and student accounts and bank accounts all intersect, for example ‘- are the people who need to be most wary about the kinds of information they put online. It’s not just Facebook profiles potentially destroying one’s chance of being hired for a new job that should be one’s primary worries about the Internet ‘- putting other information, like names, addresses and especially university identification numbers online could potentially introduce identity theft or personal information security breaches.
But it isn’t all the students’ responsibility to keep this information private. BU administration needs to keep up an equal wariness when it comes to releasing and monitoring the use of student information, particularly very personal things like unique identification numbers. It’s not difficult now for hackers to find all they need to know about a person starting with just one element of information ‘- like an ID number ‘- and going from there. BU officials need to keep an eye on the Internet to prevent things like this cache of student ID numbers from becoming a habitual occurrence. And students would fare well to Google search themselves, to see what else they may have released unknowingly to the caches of the Internet. In this age, a safe identity comes from sound judgment and a discriminatory eye for releasing information. One would never, for example, paint one’s Social Security number on their mailbox, so why would one put one’s university ID number online for all to see? It’s time to start equating virtual reality with actual reality, and to start behaving online with the same levelheadedness with which one handles real life, for both administrators and students alike.
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