Regular K

Another startling revelation made today: Music students don’t know how to logout.

After eating lunch in the Music lounge, I made my way to the computer lab to check my eBay bids. Upon arriving at eBay.ca, I was warmly greeted, “Hello, ____! (Not ____? Sign in)” I stared, dumbfounded at this person’s complete lack of Internet security. For a second, I was tempted to use his account to bid $1000 on the $300 item that I’ve been eyeing, but of course, I didn’t. I logged him out for his protection.

Then, I went to Gmail to check for new messages, but lo and behold, someone else’s inbox pops up onto the screen! I just couldn’t believe it. Without even trying, I was able to access two people’s private accounts without even making an attempt to crack their passwords. Feeling mischievous, I clicked “Compose Mail” and sent an email to that person, saying, “You should really make sure you logout after using a public computer. :)”

After that, I thought about checking other sites, like Yahoo!, Flickr, LiveJournal, Xanga, etc. but ultimately decided against it. I didn’t want to see if anyone else had forgotten to sign out of their accounts, since it would just scare me how ignorant people can be about Internet privacy. It’s no wonder that so many people have problems with online security - no matter what a Web site does to protect its users, there will always be some who are basically asking for trouble.