Northwestern Information Technology officials today will begin instituting changes to restrict the amount of information people outside NU’s Internet community can get about students from Ph.

Students will be able to choose whether to give off-campus information seekers full, partial or no access to their information. NUIT will implement the changes May 22.

Currently, students only can choose from giving off-campus seekers full or no access to their information. The partial information offered for undergraduates will be the student’s name, e-mail address and curriculum information.

Different information will be available for graduate students, faculty and staff members. For the graduate students, it will not include curricular information, and for faculty and staff, it will include phone numbers.

Prior to the change, the default setting was to allow off-campus users full access to student information, and students had to set the field to “no” to change it. Now the default setting will be “partial,” and students can change it depending on their preferences.

Associated Student Government passed a bill at the end of Fall Quarter asking for the change because of student complaints about harassment on the phone.

The bill, written by Courtney Brunsfeld, former student services vice president, and Jess Haber, a non-senator, called on administrators to restrict outsiders’ access to students’ school and home phone numbers and addresses.

Haber, an Education senior, said she brought the issue to ASG after she and her roommate received harassing phone calls from a person they’d never met.

“It might be a little restricting, for instance with students from other schools trying to get phone numbers for students here,” she said. “But it’s really good to limit outsiders from getting certain information, especially when it can be used in harassing ways.”

Brunsfeld, a Weinberg junior, said officials tweaked ASG’s plan to allow off-campus seekers the ability to narrow their search by letting them find students’ curriculums.

Another change will take away the Ph software’s capability to find information on students at 245 other major universities worldwide, including Harvard and the University of South Africa.

Tom Board, director of technology support systems, said some institutions have complained that people were using the feature to harvest e-mail addresses and send spam messages.

The Daily’s Marisa Maldonado contributed to this report.