<p>"Federal agents are warning leaders at some of the region’s top universities – including MIT, Boston College, and the University of Massachusetts – to be on the lookout for foreign spies or potential terrorists trying to steal their research, the head of the FBI’s Boston office said yesterday.</p>
<p>Agents plan to visit many more New England colleges in the coming months and are offering to provide briefings about what they call “espionage indicators” to faculty, students, or security staff as part of a national outreach to college campuses.</p>
<p>“What we’re most concerned about are those things that are not classified being developed by MIT, Worcester Polytech, and other universities,” said Warren T. Bamford, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston office. He said colleges are vulnerable to those looking to exploit that information and use it against the United States.</p>
<p>The FBI’s website says universities should consider the possibility of foreign spies posing as international students or visitors and terrorists studying advanced technologies and scientific breakthroughs on campus, as well as violent extremists and computer hackers."</p>
<p>I am bumping this up, as I consider it an important topic and about one I have frequently wondered. I especially worry for all the trusting American kids (and their parents) who BLAB online, in their blogs, etc. about every little trip they are taking. AP yesterday ran a story about a student in jail in Cairo who said something on his blog the government didn’t like. You never know who is reading your Facebook, MySpace, BulletinBoard, or Blog. Even College Confidential.</p>
<p>junejuly - do you have a link for that story? I did a search on Google news for “Cairo student jailed blog” and various combinations, and couldn’t find anything.</p>
<p>Binx, I’m sorry, I do not. I read it yesterday on Yahoo’s homepage - or rather there was a bullet on Yahoo that linked to the story. I believe the student was at the language institute in Cairo, but I am not positive where he was a student.</p>
<p>Something else people might find of interest. By now, I assume everyone has heard Facebook is available to everyone.</p>
<p>After you open your account to check on your kid (oh, sure, nobody ever does that!), whom you have been telling ten times a day for four years to NEVER post anything they wouldn’t want an employer to read, AND you discover shocking material, be aware that it is very hard to remove.
Google servers cache internally. Even if you redo your online posting, it can still be retrieved.</p>
<p>Supposedly, Facebook is password and community protected. How many rule revisions has Facebook experienced? Now, anyone can access a homepage if you know what school the student is at.</p>
<p>junejuly - even though Facebook is open to anyone, you can’t access someone’s page unless they “friend” you. Parents should be aware, however, that even if they are friended by their child, that your kids wall to wall discussions with various friends can be hidden.</p>
<p>I accessed my children’s pages and they were shocked. They insist they are password, friend and community protected in every way possible. Also, Facebook was originally only available to Ivy students, then all college students, then high school students, then those with edu emails, and now everyone. Obviously, the rules of Facebook are not reliable.</p>
<p>This is incorrect. You really cannot access certain pages as long as the user’s privacy settings are high enough. Unless you’re some kind of hacker and are going to break into the facebook servers, which I doubt is what you’re talking about.</p>
<p>One does not need to access all pages to access information that is unacceptable. </p>
<p>But Facebook does constantly change its rules. I would not want to depend upon them for privacy,
now or in the future, no matter what they promise.</p>
<p>You bring up the issue of hackers. There are lots out there. They had not occurred to me, but that is another reason to consider Facebook something to avoid, if you are concerned about safety and privacy.</p>
<p>I hope other countries are not defining our culture and stealing cultural secrets based on the information posted on most teenagers Facebook and myspace sites. On the other hand, we probably should be concerned if they are ! :eek:</p>
<p>You should just assume that anything you write in an Internet email (like Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo) or post on the Web is public record. Share this with your utes. I don’t believe ANYONE’S promise of secrecy.</p>