OIT removing NetIDs from hostnames as of June 13, 2006

Apr. 2, 2006 — OIT announced today that they are "now in the process of implementing the plan that will soon replace student NetIDs in Dormnet hostnames with random pseudonyms." All Dormnet subscriptions will be updated on June 13, 2006 and students will be notified with an automated e-mail message. For more information, please refer to OIT's KnowledgeBase article and OIT's announcement "Dormnet Subscriptions to be Renamed" (These links may only be accessible from the Princeton network.)

The new hostnames will look like pu974317.student.princeton.edu. After the hostnames have been changed, people within the University will still be able to determine the owner of a connection by searching the Princeton University Host Database. People outside the University do not have access to this database and will thus be unable to determine the identity of a student based on the pseudonym.

We thank and commend OIT for making student privacy a top priority and for their swift response on this issue.

News Flash! OIT responds to student concerns

Dec. 14, 2005 — OIT has publicly committed to a plan that will soon replace the student NetIDs in Dormnet hostnames with random pseudonyms. Steven Sather, the University's associate CIO and director of Support Services for OIT, expeditiously contacted us less than 24 hours after the Daily Princetonian article about PrincetonPrivacy.org was published. He says the fix will be complete by the beginning of the next academic year. In the meantime, OIT will help educate students about what they can do to protect their privacy.

OIT has demonstrated that they are care about student privacy. We are pleased with their swift response to our petition, and we believe the planned fix is a big step forward for Dormnet users' privacy.

After the change is implemented, website operators outside the University network will no longer be able to gather your NetID from their site logs. However, you should remember that your online activities will still not be completely anonymous. It will continue to be possible for OIT and others on campus to trace your Dormnet hostname back to your identity. The University may be forced to provide this information to outside parties when required by a court-issued subpoena.

Thank you everyone who signed the petition! Your support has helped improve the Internet privacy of all Princeton students.

How can I protect myself now?

Until OIT's promised changes take effect, Dormnet users will continue to face public exposure of their identities. In the interim, there are several things you can do to help protect yourself:

  • Use the campus wireless network instead of wired Dormnet. The wireless network already assigns Internet addresses in a privacy-friendly way, using dynamic IP addresses. Campus wireless service currently covers all undergraduate dorms and most graduate housing. See: OIT's FAQ on dormitory wireless computing.

  • Connect to the Princeton Virtual Private Network (VPN). If you don't have a wireless card, tunneling your Internet traffic through the campus VPN will give you a temporary anonymous hostname for each session. This is your best option if you only have wired Dormnet capability. See: OIT's FAQ on campus VPN.

  • Anonymize your Internet traffic using Tor. Tor is an open-source toolkit that will provide you with the strongest form of anonymity and privacy for your Internet activities. See: Tor's official website.
Attention Princeton Dormnet users! You are stripped of your online privacy every time you visit a website, connect to a peer to peer network, or use an online service. Because of the way OIT (the Office of Information Technology) runs Dormnet, you leave a trail of personally identifiable information as you browse the web. This can allow server operators, even ones outside the University, to easily trace your online activities back to your real-world identity.

This website demonstrates how OIT puts Dormnet users' privacy at risk. If you are a Princeton student, please sign our petition to ask OIT to address this problem and to tell them you value your online privacy.

Demonstration

Your computer does not appear to be connected to Dormnet. If it were, this page would have included a demonstration of the personal information that could be gathered by web sites you visit. The demonstration would have looked like this:

From your computer's publicly visible hostname, jdoe.student.princeton.edu, I inferred that your NetID is jdoe.

This lets me learn the following information about you from Princeton's public web sites and directory. You are:

You live in Wright Hall:

I might be able to learn a lot more about you from your website, http://www.princeton.edu/~jdoe, or by searching Facebook.com or Google.

PrincetonPrivacy.org was able to collect the above information even though the site is hosted off campus. Indeed, the same information can be discovered by any Internet server you connect to from Dormnet. (Note: This site will only display your personal information to you. Our intention is to demonstrate the potential for invasions of privacy, not to exacerbate it.)

Sign our petition

OIT makes it possible for any site you visit to discover the personal information shown above. Read on to learn more about the problem and what OIT can do to fix it, then sign our petition to urge OIT to restore your online privacy:

Petition to OIT

Including student NetIDs in the publicly visible hostnames for Dormnet computers threatens the privacy of Princeton students. We the undersigned urge OIT to promptly fix this serious problem.

Name and class year: petition disabled

We have already collected over 300 signatures.

Help spread the word! Join the PrincetonPrivacy group on Facebook.com.

Why does the problem occur?

Dormnet users' privacy is threatened as a result of the way OIT identifies student computers on the Internet. Like most Internet Service Providers (ISPs), OIT associates a unique name called a hostname with every computer on the network. Most ISPs assign random-looking hostnames that are difficult to trace back to a specific user, but OIT uses hostnames that contain the computer owner's NetID (usually the portion of the email address before the @ sign), for example, netid.student.princeton.edu.

Web sites and other network services you connect to can determine your hostname using a standard process called a reverse DNS lookup. If you use Dormnet, this means the operators or these sites and services will learn your NetID. This is enough information for them to guess your email address. Worse, they can also discover your name, address, phone number, and other personal information by using the University's online public directory or services like Facebook.com.

This information might be used to stalk, spam, or otherwise harass students. It can also be used to trace your online activities back to you. Most web sites keep detailed logs of every page you view. Since these logs include your network address, they can be associated with your real world identity, perhaps long after you visited the site.

What can OIT do?

OIT has been aware of this privacy problem for several years, though it only came to the attention of the student body more recently. The Daily Princetonian published an editorial on April, 20 2005 pressing OIT to remedy the problem. More than six months later, OIT has yet to take any visible action. Apparently, this issue is not a priority for OIT.

The most straightforward solution would be for OIT to use generic pseudonyms instead of NetIDs for Dormnet hostnames. That way, web sites would learn only that a visitor was a Princeton student. They would be unable to identify the student individually unless the student provided this information willingly.

OIT has indicated that changing the way hostnames are assigned would require rewriting various internal administrative tools that depend on having NetIDs within hostnames. Understandably, these upgrades will take time, but there are other measures that OIT can take in the interim. For now, we recommend that OIT implement hostnames containing pseudonyms for all external reverse DNS requests. This means that NetIDs would be visible to computers on the campus network, but not to ones elsewhere on the Internet.

Please sign our petition to urge OIT to implement these changes.

About this site

This website was created in December 2005 by Princeton students taking COS 597E: Privacy: Technology and Policy, a computer science seminar taught by professor Ed Felten. We are:

Coverage from the Daily Princetonian:

You can contact us at .