A group of York students has won the opportunity to have their very own I-phone application developed after winning The App Challenge final, held at the Ron Cooke Hub on Wednesday, January 18.
YUSU Welfare officer Bob Hughes has warned students to be vigilant after a student loans phishing scam has been revealed.
Her Majesty the Queen will be visiting York on Maundy Thursday, 5th April, as part of the 800th anniversary of York’s Charter for the traditional “Royal Maundy” ceremony.
A flood caused by a heating system “failure” forced the university IT services to shut down many essential systems on Sunday night, causing problems for many students on the eve of their exams and assignment due-dates.
In a series of emails, usernames and email addresses of all patients were disclosed when the mailing list was Cc'd, and not Bcc'd (Blind Carbon copied) meaning the addresses were visable to all recipients.
The first email, sent at 2.40pm on Friday, showed recipients the email addresses, and in some cases names of other patients, something that should be kept confidential.
The last of four emails, sent at 4.38pm, also included all the email addresses, with the content stating: "The sender would like to recall the message, 'Access to Counselling Building'."
The mistake was realised fifteen minutes later when a further email entitled 'URGENT, PLEASE DELETE LAST EMAIL' was sent.
I feel betrayed by somewhere that you should be able to trust.
The Counselling Service recalled the message, meaning that anyone who had not opened the email would have had it deleted, although one recipient, who wishes to remain anonymous told The Yorker: "I feel betrayed by somewhere that you should be able trust. I thought any information relating to me would be kept confidential, not passed on to hundreds of others.
"It seems not to have been the case; I know I would never visit them again because of this breach of confidentiality, and I am sure that many of those affected will feel the same way."
"Despite the severity, of the situation it was several hours before my complaint was acknowledged – enough time for plenty of people to have read the email addresses before it was recalled.
"There needs to be an urgent review of the way personal details are stored and handled."
Steve Page, Student Support Manager, told The Yorker: "Any student affected by what has happened and wishing to discuss this is being invited to contact the Counselling Service or Student Support Services."
The relevant professional body, The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, were contacted on Monday 25th February and Page said: "The management of accidental breach of confidence [has been] discussed with one of their advisers."
The practitioners operating with the service "are accredited by a professional body, or are members of a professional body working towards completing accreditation: accreditation involves completion of training followed by quite an extensive period of post-qualification practice".
As this was a clerical error, rather than an error by one of Counsellors, it is unclear at this point whether action will be taken. Although they added that: "It is very rare to send an email to more than one student on the database and a new protocol is now being drawn up to ensure that a similar breach cannot happen again."
The email in question was to alert people to the changes in access routes to the building due to construction work.
This is a pretty serious breach of confidentiality. At least it was only the emails that were released... not information like why people used the councelling service. Lots of people are on the councelling service mailing list and have used the councelling service to discuss both serious and relatively minor issues.
I think its hilarious that the advice if you have been affected by the incident is to...go back to the counselling service! Ah the Irony.....
This reeks of absolute incapability on the part of the counselling service.
The recall would only delete the email if you were using a Microsoft email client like Outlook or Outlook Express anyway. It's pretty shocking that this happened, not just once but over several emails. Catastrophic cock-up.
Unfortunately the only good that would come of an investigation would be that they are recommended to employ vaguely competent administrative staff.
The only comfort patients can take is that at least the disclosure was limited and not spread to the whole university, or any non-patients.
Hopefully this will not have the effect of putting people off going to the counsellors if they need help, from my personal experience they've been fantastic.
People really are stupid ... does anyone EVER use the CC field? Surely if that was removed, less mistakes would be made.
They probably use the CC for other administrative tasks. It is actually quite useful. Besides, you're proposing altering software or creating new programs which is a lot more taxing than just employing the right people in the first place.
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