Emma emailed her concerns regarding the Harvard story below:

I saw your blog post about how Harvard was making student information (including medical records) viewable to the public. While I do agree with the idea that it's a possible violation of HIPAA (it'll be interesting to see if anyone makes a fuss), it seems odd that quite a few schools post information for students that the students might not want made public. Case in point: Southwest Missouri State University lists student off-campus addresses and phone numbers - you don't need to enter any information, just know someone's last name. That seems like it would have caused enough problems for the school, seeing as how it's not a tiny campus, that they'd think that was a really bad idea.

She makes a fantastic point - colleges consistently seem to disregard their customers' (read students) privacy. Raise your hand if your "college ID number" was your SSN. I can remember piles of tests and grades posted with full names and SSN's. How bad will someone have to get stung before this changes?

posted by mt at 15:39

Well, we all knew it would happen eventually - the cell phone virus. This particular one does some nasty stuff and disables the phone, unlike previous, weaker attempts.

posted by mt at 08:22