In response to Justin Niichel’s letter, “Keep spam from filling inbox,” I agree that spam is a frustrating issue, and perhaps a little light can be cast on the reasons why. The list of student contact information is sold by the Office of the Registrar for a small fee. I have not confirmed whether they sell this information to non-ISU organizations, though I’ve been told they do.

Forgive me, we’re about to go technical here, but this is something students should know.

For those who are tech-savvy, grabbing your personal information from Iowa State’s servers is incredibly easy. Iowa State operates an LDAP server that is accessible from any computer with an internet connection. What is LDAP? Think of it like a giant YellowPages database. Iowa State keeps some student information in this database. What you see on the ISU Directory Information site (StalkerNet, as we all so affectionately call it) is most likely taken from this LDAP server.

ISU’s LDAP server can be accessed by anyone without any credentials or verification of the user’s identity. A savvy user, using some free software, can actually dump the entire database and keep it for whatever use they so choose. I’ve pulled my record to give you an example of the information in this database. Don’t worry about what these things all mean, just pay attention to what they actually contain:

uid: msulliv

cn: Matthew Edward Sullivan

cn: Matthew E Sullivan

cn: Matthew Sullivan

displayName: Matthew Edward Sullivan

sn: Sullivan

givenName: Matthew

title: Matthew Edward Sullivan – student – MIS

ou: MIS

isuPersonCollegeAbbrev: BUS

isuPersonCollege: College of Business

isuPersonMajor: MIS

isuPersonStudentMajor: MIS

isuPersonStatus: active

isuPersonMiddleInitial: E

isuPersonMiddleName: Edward

userClass: student

telephoneNumber: +1 641 xxx xxxx

postalAddress: 3323 Frederiksen Ct $ $ Ames IA $ 50010

postOfficeBox:

street: 3323 Frederiksen Ct

l: Ames

st: IA

postalCode: 50010

mail: [email protected]

homePhone:

homePostalAddress: 240 N Miles St $ $ Fremont IA $ 52561

eduPersonAffiliation: student

eduPersonPrimaryAffiliation: student

eduPersonOrgDN: o=Iowa State University, dc=iastate, dc=edu

eduPersonOrgUnitDN: ou=MIS, o=Iowa State University, dc=iastate, dc=edu

eduPersonPrincipalName: [email protected]

Not only could an organization send me spam to my e-mail from these public records, but they could also to my apartment in Freddy, or my parents’ home in small-town Iowa.

Seems a little bit much, don’t you think?

Matthew Sullivan is a junior in management information systems.