STUDENTS EXPOSED in university IT blunder The Information Commissioner's Office has reprimanded the University of York for stuffing up its IT systems so that student records were accessible to anyone. The ICO blamed a staff member who "failed to realise they had made an error while carrying out work on the University's IT system". The screw-up resulted in student …
Information published on Facebook is done so with the consent of the individual, and they decide via their privacy settings who has access to it.
In this case, information was published, albeit inadvertently, without prior consent from the individuals and was left online for a year where anyone could access it.
What's the point of the ICO?
>"Information included dates of birth, mobile numbers, A level results and addresses."
>"The ICO said because the data was relatively harmless it decided not to fine the university."
Sorry ICO, that's not harmless information.
@Pete2: possibly, but that's the choice of the student NOT a third party that can't handle their responsibilities to secure personal data.
And the people of the world wonder why groups like Anonymous and Lulzsec are out there. Who is the ICO to decide what is minor or not. How is this decision going to send a message to others and this University to smarten up and stop being so nonchalant with individuals information? Sure these kids might have had some of this information and more on Facebook but they at least had control over when and where they posted it. If they felt it was being abused they could subsequently remove it.
My name, (university) email address and possibly my student enrolment number was present on a course list for all to view. I thought that was pretty poor due to the fact that I graduated over 2 years ago, that page should definitely be listed in robots.txt, and it was trivial for course instructors to tell the webserver to only display pages internally (some lecturers did this to prevent course content from being given away outside the institution) why should anyone outside my course, let alone university have access to this information?
Having been to a University, even before recent dumbing down shenanigans, I found that, on the whole, those I met there were neither smarter nor stupider than those in the outside world. Yes, many were clever but that doesn't necessarily make them smart. Ah, fun days.
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