Data, data, data... that’s the word of the year for the U.S. Education system.  Teachers and principals want to follow you throughout your entire school career and see how you turned out.  To make this easier, the Maine State Legislature passed a bill that would go into effect this year, requesting students’ social security numbers and linking those numbers to this data.

Some people are wondering about the potential risks of this bill, titled, “An Act To Improve the Ability of the Department of Education To Conduct Longitudinal Data Studies.” Though the bill says it would collect social security numbers in compliance with the Privacy Act of 1974, and releasing your child's social security number is optional, people fear the consequences of an identity thief getting their hands on a database of students’ social security numbers.  

The ACLU came out with a strong statement against the bill. “Improperly protected student data, which can include disciplinary records as well as academic transcripts, can affect one's access to housing, employment, and credit later in life.”

The Pine Tree Politics blog of Maine discusses the reasons for instituting the bill in the first place, “Longitudinal data is important to the future of K-12 education.  Data on students can be used appropriately to judge how well curriculum and initiatives are working.  It also provides information for teachers to better determine where individual students may need specific help, even before they reach their class.  A quality data system will benefit everyone in Maine’s education system.  That does not mean the current system is free from concern.”

The SAD #44 School Board submitted a resolution asking that the bill be repealed stating, “As a board, we must ask parents to refrain from handing over children’s social security numbers. Attaching a child's social security number to his or her achievement and other information is a violation of privacy.”

LOS ANGELES-- This week in the Baldwin Village area of LA's Crenshaw district, FBI raided the home of a "key player" in a phishing scheme that claimed $2 million dollars from victims around the world.  Upon raiding the home (a part of a 100 person roundup in US and Egypt known as "Operation Phish Fry"), the FBI also seized several marijuana plants.

Phishing is when hackers try to lure victims, via email and other social media, to phony websites in attempts to gather personal information that can be used to wipe out bank accounts or open credit card accounts.  In 2009, Consumer Fraud Reporting reported over 275,000 complaints of identity theft totaling over $264 billion. While this week's bust is the first to link a major identity theft operation to a drug ring, I suspect that phishing might have been the means to set up a host of other legal and illegal business endeavors.

This bust MAY have brought several digital thieves to justice, but does it make the web any safer from cyber predators?  Joshua Smith, Technology Strategist of Untangled Solutions explains why not:

Cyber-crime is really no different from your more traditional crime. While the progress of the FBI is very impressive, I feel it is a drop in the bucket. The criminal world is realizing, much like the business world has, that the Internet offers a way to multiply the outcome of your efforts. The cost of sending one million fake bank notices is the same as one. Expecting the efforts of law enforcement to make the web a safer place is a mistake. There are places in this world where the long arm of the law is not able to reach and that is where the criminals will strike from.

He wouldn't, however go so far as to call the situation hopeless.

Just like in the real world, some common sense and education of the less tech-savvy masses is needed. The easier it becomes for people to go online, the more safety will need to be taught and provided via anti-(spam, malware, virus, phishing) software.

I would urge all readers to be careful when surfing and know that the net is still not very safe.  I also encourage you all to read the Consumer Fraud Reportings findings and make yourself aware of the various types of digital fraud and how they are committed.

Who is Genai Powers? If you’re my age, your first instinct will be to look her up on MySpace. There, you’ll find the profile of a 17-year-old girl who goes by “Geezie.” Her profile page flashes with a rainbow star background and it blasts her current favorite song, “That’s Not My Name” by the Ting Tings.

Then there’s the MySpace profile of the other 17-year-old Genai Powers. It’s a plain, no-frills site—just a couple of photos of Genai and a bio that describes her as… a skank?
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On top of keeping up with grades, financial aid, and midterms, college students now have to worry about identity theft. UC Berkeley students are facing the possibility of being victims of identity theft. On April 21, UC Berkeley technicians realized that the restricted computer databases in the university's health services center had been hacked. Since then, technicians have been evaluating millions of log sheets trying to understand what the hackers had access to.

It wasn’t too long ago that I was having an ordinary day, just checking my messages on MySpace, when a random person sent me a message saying that someone duplicated my MySpace. When I went to my cloned MySpace, I saw pictures of myself, and the “fake” who stole my online identity had written lies and scandalous rumors about me. I immediately wanted to know who would invade my life like that, and post things about me on the Internet that weren’t true. Read more...