I’m sure this has got to be a violation of some sort of law, probably related the FERPA. I got this email from some random people outside of IIT today:
Hello,
Welcome! You have been registered in your university/college ELMS
for MSDNAA online software system. Here you can download and
access a wide range of Microsoft developer tools, servers, and
platforms. There is no charge to download the software as long
as you are an eligible user in the System.
How Does it Work?
Your university/college is licensed under the MSDN Academic
Alliance Program which enables eligible students and faculty
members to access software available under the Program. e-academy
Inc., a partner of Microsoft, is providing ELMS for MSDNAA to you.
Simply log into the System using your username and password
included below and start browsing/ordering the software
available to you.
Your MSDNAA Online Software System can be found at:
http://msdn03.e-academy.com/iit_cs
The mail goes one for a few more paragraphs and even has my username and password in plaintext. This is a problem in several ways. First of all, this data is a marketing gold mine for e-academy or whoever. Knowing that not only are these people college students, but they also are computer science graduate students can be worth a lot of money. Furthermore they can track what software students use to a greater degree than I think anyone would like to admit.
I’m just really pissed off that my university would distribute my information in such a way. It makes me wonder what other sort of information they have given away (I use that term because the MSDNAA program costs money). I have no intention of using the software and will not participate in the program. I need to go bitch at a real person I guess.