apologies for duplicate emails, but that was the wrong link: from the idcards.umd.edu site, hit "personal identification initiative": http://www.oit.umd.edu/units/dataadmin/PersonalIdentification/
"For decades, the Social Security Number (SSN) has been used as an ID number for each individual associated with the University community. Because the University is committed to protecting the privacy of individuals, President Mote approved the Policy on Collection, Use and Protection of ID Numbers on May 31, 2005, and a plan has been developed to limit the use of SSN and promote the use of alternate identifiers. It will always be necessary to obtain and store the SSN for students and employees, as it is used for administering financial aid programs, complying with State and Federal reporting requirements, generating federal tax forms and exchanging student data between post-secondary institutions. However, it will be used in limited cases in more secure environments. The long-term goal is to convert all University systems to use alternate identifiers." I'm pretty sure the "security functions" just means, "doesn't have your SSN on it." there's not room for too much data on the magswipe (~100 chars/track, up to 3 tracks/stripe, IIRC), and although I haven't seen them yet, I'm assuming it's the same hardware system, because any other upgrade would just be too drastic. -Phil On 4/25/06, Phil Anderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > On 4/25/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Try as I might, I haven't been able to find any further explanation on > > this. Anyone know whether that's a euphamism for "we want to invade your > > privacy by putting more personal data on your student ID", or is it > > something else? > > > > > http://idcards.umd.edu/faqs.html > > On the current generation of IDs, the SSN is encoded on the magnetic swipe > strip. So, anyone who found your ID, and had a magswipe reader (easy to come > by) could know your SSN. This is supposedly part of the university's plan to > move away from using SSN as identifiers; so I [hope|doubt] that they have > managed to counteract that by putting _more_ personal data in the code. > > Side note: how was the university planning on telling us? I didn't think I > was that out of the loop, honestly, but the first I heard about this was an > unofficial email three days ago on a club mailing list. Did they at least > send out an official email (and maybe my spam filter ate it or something?) > > > -Phil >
