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Gmail Reveals the Names of All Users
ihatespam writes "Have you ever wanted to know the name of admin@gmail.com? Now you can. Through a bug in Google calendars the names of all registered Gmail accounts are now readily available. All you need to find out the names of any gmail address is a Google calendar account yourself. Depending on your view this ranges from a harmless "feature" to a rather serious privacy violation. According to some reports, spammers are already exploiting this "feature"/bug to send personalized spam messages."
Gmail strips out punctuation. So email to First.Last@gmail.com goes to the same inbox as FirstLast@gmail.com
I know individuals with a hell of a lot of sense who would give their real names in such a situation.
So? Part of the reason for that is that full names in and of themselves are not really a security risk. I walk around all day in public with an ID badge that gives my first and last name. Big deal. Our names are our public identifiers.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
The Families Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 allows a student at a university to require the university to not release their name to anyone. For example, if you check for my name at my school's phonebook, you'll find I'm not listed. If you call my registrar's office and ask for information on me, they'll tell you that they don't have a student by my name. You see, it's against the law for them to even confirm that I'm a student.
Since many schools have outsourced their email systems to Gmail, anyone can generate a full roster of student names through this trick. This could obviously result in many violations of FERPA.