Concordia University bans Facebook access

MONTREAL–Concordia University has banned Facebook from its on-campus terminals for all students and staff in an effort to protect its computer network from unauthorized invasions and spam.

Officials at Concordia were noticing an increase in hacking attempts and the amount of spam entering their systems, as well as attempted "phishing" expeditions, which look for personal information, possibly for reasons of identity theft.

Technical experts at the university traced the source of the attacks to social networking sites, particularly Facebook.

"They're a real gateway," to the network, said university spokesperson Christine Mota. "The concern is the integrity of the system because the number of attacks we've been getting is outrageous."

One reason sites like Facebook are problematic, she explained, is that users post a lot of their personal information on them, even confidential information such as email addresses and phone numbers.

"It's information hackers are using to enter our system," she said.

Facebook, which began as a service exclusively for college students, has millions of profiles. Many students publicize their university email addresses in their personal contact details.

As if to underscore the problem, Mota and dozens of others received an email just two days ago that appeared official-looking, complete with the Concordia logo, talking about computer network issues and asking recipients for their usernames and passwords.

But the email was not from Concordia. Even so, 30 people had forwarded their personal information before university officials yesterday sent out a warning about the scheme, Mota said.

Concordia is looking at other social networking sites and may block others in the future, she said.

Students and staff will still be able to access Facebook from their own laptop computers using a wireless signal.