On Sept. 4, junior David Vivian tried logging into the UF Sakai system to do some homework for his classes.
But instead of being greeted by the welcome sight of the Sakai work panels, Vivian was surprised by an error message.
“Your account has been locked,” the screen read. “Please contact the UF system administrator.”
Vivian was locked out of his GatorLink account. The problem was that he had two assignments due the next day.
“It blindsided me,” Vivian said. “It was like ‘I did not know they could even do this.’”
UF system administrators can, and will, if a student’s computer is infected by a malicious virus.
“Your GatorLink account is used for all kinds of things,” said Rob De Cespedes, an IT specialist at the UF Computing Help Desk in the Hub. “Beyond your e-mail, lots of people have them tied in with their bank accounts. If someone has compromised the account, they can do some horrible things. Way more horrible than not being able to view a class lecture for an hour.”
Locking an account is also a way of preventing the virus from spreading throughout the network, he said.
If the computer is shut off from accessing the Internet, it also can help prevent viruses aimed at stealing personal information, such as credit card numbers.
But these preventative measures can be inconvenient for students, whose professors are increasingly relying on UF’s E-Learning and Sakai systems for assignment submissions.
“It didn’t just hamper me,” Vivian said. “But it actually stopped me from doing schoolwork.”
Still, De Cespedes said that in the event of a serious infection, disabling accounts is the best option.
“We understand that when someone’s GatorLink gets disabled, it’s inconvenient,” he said. “We want to make that process as quick and painless as possible. Things like this make it so that at least if we can’t get to someone right away, they’re not infecting anybody else.”
In order to avoid the frustration of having your GatorLink account shut down, it is important to know how to avoid getting malicious viruses in the first place, he said.
“People can obtain malicious viruses from nefarious websites,” De Cespedes said. “Places they wouldn’t tell someone they’ve been to.”
Viruses are also commonly obtained through movie and software piracy.
The Computing Help Desk will help students clean their hard drives if they are unsure how to do so, he said.
Usually, what is recommended to students who have contracted a virus that would result in their GatorLink being shut down is a process called reformatting, which completely erases the hard drive.
Should students elect to do so, the technicians are able to backup data that students wish to save off their computer before the drive is wiped.
If a student wishes to go through the cleaning process and sit with the technicians, there is a $25 charge, which includes data backup. If he leaves his or her computer with the technicians, there is a $35 charge in addition to 50 cents per gigabyte of data he or she wishes to save.
