Thursday, May 24, 2001

U. of Michigan Deactivates Internet Program Linked to Stalking Incidents By FLORENCE OLSEN After eight incidents of network-related stalking on its Ann Arbor campus in the last three years, the University of Michigan has discontinued a network service that acts as a people-locator. On May 11, systems engineers turned off a command in the "finger user information protocol" because it could identify the user name, building location, and particular computer being used by someone who was logged into a network system running the finger service. That information was blamed for the stalking incidents, the most recent of which was reported in early April. University staff members offered few details about the incidents. "I believe that it's never become a legal issue -- that something bad happened to somebody" as a result, says Seth Meyer, systems engineer at Ann Arbor. "But we wanted to make it harder for the person to find them when they didn't want to be found." The finger protocol dates back to the 1970's and the pre-Internet days of Arpanet when it was written to help a small group of network research engineers and scientists to keep in touch. Its locator service, which works in conjunction with an old-style instant-messaging system, "actually isn't all that popular except among people who have been using this stuff for a long time," Mr.Meyer says. "If somebody fingered me, and if they knew the [campus] environment well, they'd say, Oh, that's Angel Hall, Station 230 -- I can just go there and find that person right now," Mr. Meyer says. The complaints about stalking were made mostly by female freshman and sophomore students, who notified personnel in the Information Technology Central Services office. In the past, that office had viewed such incidents as an unfortunate consequence of using public-computing resources, Mr. Meyer says. But after the incident in April,the department changed its position. It did so not because the April incident was more egregious than others, but because computing officials saw a worrisome trend. "It was sort of the straw that broke the camel's back," says Mr. Meyer. All of the incidents involved men stalking female undergraduates in residence halls, at public-computing sites, or at the central campus computing site, he says. In each of the cases, the man was either an ex-boyfriend or shared a class or residence hall with the woman, Mr. Meyer says. The female students involved "are sort of in this gray area," he adds, "where they don't want to go to the police, and yet they don't want people to know where they are." The reaction to shutting down the locator feature by people who like using the service was immediate and vocal, Mr. Meyer adds. But because of mixed sentiment on campus about the finger service, university officials plan to hold a forum this summer to solicit further responses from students and faculty and staff members about their public-information and privacy concerns. Among other things, the finger service can be set up to provide information about whether the person "fingered" has unread mail waiting or even who sent the most recent unread mail. Professors and teaching assistants have used it occasionally to verify whether students' claims that they "never got the e-mail" were truthful, Mr. Meyer says. But more often, finger can be a dangerous service that provides useful information to network hackers. "If I were a hacker and trying to break into some Unix machine," adds Mr. Meyer, "the best bet is that the machine running finger is the one I can break into." "Personally, I prefer disabling finger, not as a privacy issue but as a security issue," says Randy C. Marchany, a computer systems senior engineer and security expert at Virginia Tech. "Once I've disabled it," he adds, "I've addressed the privacy issue." Although Mr. Marchany hasn't heard of other campus stalking incidents connected directly to the finger service, "it wouldn't surprise me," he says. One thing is certain: Finger has become ingrained in campus culture, and not only at Ann Arbor and other large university campuses. At a small liberal-arts college, finger plays a role in a game called KAOS -- or Killing As Organized Sport -- in which students must locate other players and shoot them using Nerf guns. At Michigan, no liability lawsuits have been filed against the university as a result of the stalking incidents, Mr. Meyer says. But university officials say they are going to revisit the finger issue soon, before deciding whether to retire the service once and for all. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

Senate's expected Democratic tilt could benefit colleges, lobbyists say Senate passes $1.35-trillion tax-cut bill containing provisions important to colleges Gifts to education hit record $28-billion in 2000 SUNY-Buffalo dean ousts chairwoman for not reprimanding T.A.'s in suspected labor action Group suggests ways to increase college-going rates of Hispanic students New panel will evaluate institutions that perform research on human subjects Spring commencement speakers are announced by 23 colleges U. of Michigan deactivates Internet program linked to stalking incidents U. of Vermont considers intellectual-property policy said to foster distance education