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Comment on Boston College Campus Police: "Using Prompt Commands" May Be a Sign of Criminal Activity

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I learned the hard way back in high school: Don't let anyone see you using a command prompt because the next time something gets hacked, you will be suspect number one.

It's sad to see nothing has changed since the 90s.

Back in college, we were required to take an introduction to computers course - no way to test out of it. It involved labs like, "create a folder with two text files in it." I spent the time configuring a new debian server via ssh.

When the teacher caught a glimpse of PuTTY: "OH! You know DOS??!"

I used to flaunt my computer skills back in school, because I knew if/when something got hacked I could explain exactly how it was done, and remind them that I'd warned them it could happen months earlier. (This exact thing did end up happening.) The authorities at my school seemed less prone to complete lapses of logic (as demonstrated by the police in this article) so I wasn't so afraid of being unable to defend myself in the face of unjust accusations. (Logic and reason sufficed, thankfully.)

I wouldn't agree with this completely. In the university I attended, I told the IT staff about security issues with their wifi network. I even gave demonstrations to the other computer science students (via the cs club) on breaking into/decrypting said type of wireless networks. The IT staff was friendly and helpful and updated their security mechanisms. The problems happen at times like this when people with no clue and don't know what is being said get involved. After all, big words I don't understand are scary to me when lawyers talk too.

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