Photo Illustration by Nick Faulk
The Office of Information Technology is hoping to reach out to students about data privacy month, which takes place from January 28th to February 28th. OIT has a series of videos online to help students keep themselves safe in all forms of online activity.
The Office of Information and Technology (OIT) is celebrating Data Privacy Month, which lasts until February 28.
“We are encouraging people to go out and familiarize themselves with ways that they can help protect their own data, as well as the data they may come in contact with,” said Stan North Martin, director of OIT Outreach.
Data Privacy Month is a way of reminding students to check their privacy settings on social media networks and informing people to be more aware of how they are sharing information they put on the Internet, according to Martin.
“Awareness is one of the biggest weapons to preventing a breach in security,” said Leo Howell, assistant director for IT Policy & Compliance.
Martin discourages students from sharing online information with anybody, even their parents.
“There are growing cases of identity theft that are taking place,” Martin said.
There have been cases at universities where staff members had their pay checks routed to different banking accounts when they had lost access to their data, Martin said. Hackers were able to obtain their passwords and credentials to log into the university system and reroute their paychecks.
The OIT has free antivirus software students can use to prevent hackers from accessing online information.
“Certainly, we’ve all heard of stories of students who have posted things that they thought were only being shared with certain people but were actually being shared more widely than that,” Martin said.
One NC State student shared her Google login credentials with her boyfriend. When she ended their relationship, he erased all of her e-mails and Google documents, according to Martin.
“Data privacy is important for all of us, but it’s important for students to realize that they are responsible for maintaining the data that they have,” Martin said.
To promote internet security, OIT is providing a video series and a contest to win an iPod Touch after completing the quizzes following the videos.