I was aware of the FAQ; the information about the mag strip isn't on that page.
But if that's the extent of it, well, gee, I'm not too wowed over this. -- Brian C. Merrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Tue, 25 Apr 2006, Phil Anderson wrote: > On 4/25/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Try as I might, I haven't been able to find any further explanation on > > this. Anyone know whether that's a euphamism for "we want to invade your > > privacy by putting more personal data on your student ID", or is it > > something else? > > > > http://idcards.umd.edu/faqs.html > > On the current generation of IDs, the SSN is encoded on the magnetic swipe > strip. So, anyone who found your ID, and had a magswipe reader (easy to come > by) could know your SSN. This is supposedly part of the university's plan to > move away from using SSN as identifiers; so I [hope|doubt] that they have > managed to counteract that by putting _more_ personal data in the code. > > Side note: how was the university planning on telling us? I didn't think I > was that out of the loop, honestly, but the first I heard about this was an > unofficial email three days ago on a club mailing list. Did they at least > send out an official email (and maybe my spam filter ate it or something?) > > -Phil >
