Mail Theft, Credit Fraud and hacker@fas

You can meticulously check your packages to see if anyone’s broken a seal. You can eye the kid sitting next to you in the computer lab to make sure he’s not watching you type your PIN. But are those precautionary measures necessary to protect your identity, or are conspiracy theorists in for a disappointment?

Say a package is oozing with strange goo, or is emitting ticking noises. Would it be unceremoniously torn open in a back room only to be revealed as a crushed pie or new watch? University Mail Services, which supervises the mail in several upperclass houses, answers with a resounding no.

“If it has a person’s name on it, we wouldn’t open it. I can’t imagine any circumstance in which we would.” says Assistant Manager for Administration-Mail Services David R. Berry.

Legal issues prevent mail services from digging into student property, but what of intrepid computer-savvy students seeking to skirt the law?

“There are programs out there that can crack passwords,” says Erin Nettifee, Supervisor of Residential Computing. “It can be done but it takes time, so it’s not easy.”

University Technology Security Officer Scott O. Bradner says that the PIN server is almost uncrackable. Even if an ingenious Cantabrigian were to break into the server, Harvard PINs are stored in a cryptographic hash and cannot be decrypted even by the system manager.

And as for credit card numbers, one card issuer, Harvard University Employees Credit Union, guarantees that it stops all abnormal transactions for one card. There’s not much room for error here, says employee Jose M. Flores, unless someone fails to report purchases that he or she didn’t make.

In sum, Harvard may not be safe for its students’ long distance relationships, but it certainly is for their identities.