BYU students could benefit from learning a thing or two about privacy, even if it’s from an unlikely source – Paris Hilton.

Hackers recently accessed hundreds of unlisted celebrity phone numbers from Hilton’s T-Mobile “sidekick” cellular phone. The heiress to the Hilton family fortune issued a formal apology to those celebrities whose information was distributed online, as T-Mobile’s forensics specialists investigated how the numbers were obtained.

The issue sparked national interest and concern about the vulnerability of information stored in Internet accessible cell phones and other devices including handheld computers and student laptops, which is a common sight at BYU.

“Wireless Internet connections allow anyone who is using the same router as someone else to have access to their shared information,” said Curtis Hostetler, a junior majoring in financial services from West Palm Beach, Fla. “If someone buys a router and is smart enough to set it up, they should be able to use the security features; if they don’t, they’re just inviting people to steal their Internet and access what’s on their computer.”

At BYU, celebrity phone numbers aren’t as hot a commodity as software and music, which students have begun to download from any place where others are using a wireless router, including the BYU library.

“I have friends who will sit down at the library and use a program to take songs from any of the students around them,” Hostetler said. “They’ll have access to up to 15,000 songs, and they can just pick the ones they want.”

The library isn’t the only place to “buddy up” onto a common wireless router. Instead of paying for off-campus Internet, many BYU students will tap into a neighbor’s connection and use it for free.

Bill Hulterstrom, chair of the I-Provo project, which proposes to bring a fiber-optic Internet connection to Provo residents, said taking another’s Internet without paying is unethical.

“People don’t steal their neighbor’s cable line or electricity,” Hulterstrom said. “But using someone else’s Internet connection is commonplace in Provo apartments, and many don’t think it’s wrong.”

Hulterstrom added that while privacy is sometimes compromised over shared connections, students can lock their networks and take other precautions to ensure further protection.

BYU students can also limit the amount of information that can be accessed by other students and campus employees. Part-time professor Lili Anderson, who teaches Family Life 100, said students who feel threatened, can remove their information from the BYU directory.

“I recently tried to get a hold of a student though Route Y and she wasn’t listed anymore,” Anderson said. “I know students call the directory the ‘stalker net;’ but you can choose to have your address and phone number available or not.”

The phone numbers of BYU students are probably much easier to obtain than those of Hollywood celebrities, but telephone directories have been carrying addresses and phone numbers of “normal people” for decades.

Some don’t like it, but it might help more than it hurts.

“By virtue of the fact that we live in society, we give up certain small aspects of our privacy,” said Edward Carter, assistant professor of communications at BYU. “I’m not saying this justifies theft of personal information; I’m just saying that sometimes we – perhaps naively – believe that we can keep everything about ourselves private. That’s not true.”



Copyright Brigham Young University 1 Mar 2005