Who R U? Identity Theft and UNL Students

Authors

Marcia L. Dority Baker, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Cheryl O'Dell, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

Date of this Version

4-10-2017

Document Type

Article

Citation

Educause Review, Monday, April 10, 2017
http://er.educause.edu/blogs/2017/4/who-r-u-identity-theft-and-unl-students

Comments

© 2017 Marcia L. Dority Baker and Cheryl O'Dell. This EDUCAUSE Review blog is licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Abstract

How can academic institutions help educate their students about the risks of identity theft? Or teach students to better understand how one’s online presence can hold so much joy and angst? For one campus, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, the opportunity came from a middle school teacher engaging his students in a future problem-solving activity. UNL had the opportunity to create a 45-minute presentation on identity theft for local public school students who would be spending the day on campus researching this topic.

While preparing the presentation, we realized a top 10 list on identity theft for UNL students would be a practical resource for our campus. Even better would be partnering with our university libraries to make the information readily available to students through online subject guides ("LibGuides"). While the ITS website is full of helpful information for our users, it is not a visible or a high-priority website for our students. We hope the new Identity Theft LibGuide will improve how we share information on campus, as it is searchable in the library catalog and can be easily updated — and it's a high-profile place where students look for information. So, live from Lincoln, Nebraska, this is our top 10 list of things that UNL students should be aware of regarding identity theft. We included information specific to our campus to correlate the sharing of information or technologies with the potential lose of private information. Another recommended resource is this identity theft video from BuzzFeed!