14 DAY TRIAL // Are we paranoid security geeks or is this really a threat? Well, to be honest, I think that school sites giving away all sorts of data about their students are easing the 'work' of hackers. Nobody is in any direct danger, so to say, but every bit of info disclosed might be a starting point for malicious users. I wouldn't panic too much about it, since I can't think of any reason why a hacker would want to steal data form a 12-year-old, but you just never know!
In any case, I wonder - are these sites really necessary? I mean, I lived all my life without any school or high-school site and I had no problems. I can't figure out what could be so important that it should be put on the web. And let's get serious - how many people actually visit these sites? My college used to have a site, it had very and I mean very low traffic. Colleagues would ask me about something in the hallway and I explained it to them and also told them that the site says something about it as well. But they never bothered to check the site. And mine was not the only case - many colleges have sites, but students hardly ever visit them.
As I've seen on c|net, security expert Linda Criddle asked schools, students and parents to take a look at school websites and check whether they reveal too much personal info or not, because if they do, that should definitely be changed!
So, are these websites really necessary, considering the fact that they reveal a lot of personal info that can be somehow phished? I don't know. But what I do know is that they all look nice and simple and are easy to duplicate. Not once I read that students have been tricked to give away their data on sites that were clones of their own school's web page.