<p>While trying to determine if my daughter had hooked up with her friend after dropping her off in Seattle last night, I looked at who she was messaging by looking online @ the cellphone bill. </p>
<p>There was an area code I didn’t recognize & after googling the number, I was surprised to not only get the name of the owner but also her email & that of about 30 other student/staffers at the new england college where she worked. ( as well as their work schedules)</p>
<p>I don’t know how many schools put so much information up without needing to have an internal log in, but I thought I would warn people in case they want to limit their web presence.</p>
<p>From what I have seen, a lot of schools post the school emails and phone numbers of faculty, staff, grad students, etc. on their websites. All the emails are the school assigned ones. I have never had a problem with mine.</p>
<p>^^^Agreed, this is actually quite common. It’s just the modern day equivalent of listing your address and phone number in the phone book. By default most such directories would list an e-mail and perhaps an office phone number. </p>
<p>Users typically have direct control over what is and is not published and generally something like a cell phone number would only be published if the person specifically made it available for that purpose.</p>
<p>This phone was for a cell phone & it was for an undergrad student- I hadn’t run across this sort of information through either of my daughters schools- so it seemed a bit much to me.</p>
<p>My school posts name, home and cell number, email address, school address, and home address online and in a book if you don’t tell them not to-- which I did not hear about last year until the book had already been published, I had no idea all that information would be made public. I find it pretty irksome. I take down everything except my school email address.</p>
<p>Your daughter would probably agree about a lack of privacy. Although kids these days don’t seem to care too much about these things. Back in the day, if I thought my mother was keeping track of who I was calling, I’d have a conniption!</p>
<p>At my daughter’s school she has the option of deciding how public to make her contact information. Each entry (cell phone, address, etc) has a drop down scroll to choose privacy. The default is “XX Univ Only.” Maybe your daughter can go into her entry on the school’s directory and see if such a thing exists for her.</p>
<p>To mousegray- I suspect the lack of privacy Ekity4 was referring to was not the snooping she did through D’s phone records to see who D is sleeping with(“hooked up with her friend”) but rather the ease of obtaining college student emails.</p>
<p>I don’t think the “privacy warning” meant-<br>
Keep Emeraldkity4 away from your cellphone!
I think it meant be private about your email addresses.</p>
<p>Certainly an interesting perspective, though!</p>
<p>*ack in the day, if I thought my mother was keeping track of who I was calling, I’d have a conniption! *</p>
<p>I also have access to her online banking accounts- when she was traveling abroad at 18, it was reassuring for both of us that even though she rarely had access to the internet, I could monitor her money in case she needed some added or if there seemed to be fraud. ( she did have her cellphone/wallet stolen soon after her arrival)</p>
<p>I do have numbers of many of Ds friends already- , when she is ready to pay her own phone bills, then she will have earned her privacy, until then- it just adds to my mystique of * always knowing what she is doing!* ;)</p>
<p>^^^Agreed, Mom mystique is very important to maintain. Anyway, I’m not really taking a moral high road here – I’d just rather NOT know everything she’s up to, for the sake of my own sanity. But that’s another topic.</p>
<p>It may be that more information is available with UMass employees (whether permanent, part time, undergraduate, etc.) because it is a public university. The requirements for release of data under Massachusett’s Public Records law is quite broad. I used to work for a municipality and had no option to keep my name, address or phone number private. The only exception is for public safety workers like police or fire fighters due to concerns for their personal safety and that of their families.</p>