📆 June 6, 2020 | ⏱️ 1 minute read | 🏷️ computing, siue

SIUe Cyberstalking Feature

https://www.siue.edu/search/people.shtml¹

This lesser-known feature has existed for at least 2 years and probably much longer than that. I emailed their help desk² several times pointing out the search feature could be abused by cyberstalkers and data mined. I pointed out that it should require authentication and not be open to the public internet. It's a huge risk for student privacy and safety. Anyone can find any student's full name, area of study, rank, home address, phone number and university email. A week later, I still have no response.

A quick search reveals that other university's student directories generally don't include the student's rank, home address, or phone number. SIUe should at least remove the home address and phone number fields from public view.

References

🔗 [1]: https://www.siue.edu/search/people.shtml

🔗 [2]: help desk