Is This Safe?

"your account" is an ID, it is simply a string of data stored on harddrives on your schools server. If it gets messed up then they recover from back-ups. Many servers use RAID drives so if one goes bad they have an instant back-up then there are also probably nightly back-ups. So yes it's possible you might loose a little work but it is very unlikely because unlike your basic/average user schools and businesses spend considerable resources on back-up plans and disaster recovery.

It's not your responsibility; it has an extremely low probability of affecting your account, it is highly unlikely you will loose any of your work and if you do you won't be alone, so ... Do your homework!

Lol thanks...

This doesn't just pertain to college sites though. How about even here on W7 forums, my Youtube account, Facebook account, etc...I guess the stability of my account on those sites are also dependent on those sites' servers?

What I'm also scared of though is hacking, like if I have a virus, and I log on to one of these online accounts, and the username/password somehow becomes known to some anonymous person. I'm pretty sure some version of malware can do that.

In that case...I risk having the accounts compromised?

Anytime your userid or password gets shared it puts you at risk. Whether you give it to someone or your machine gets infected with a keylogger and a third party takes that information.

It is much more likely that the security compromise itself will come from your end then it will the server end but once they have that info they can use it to take over your info on the server. This is normally for monetary gain so forget Facebook or Youtube and think more Paypal, Ebay, and bank accounts.

This is why everyone must take the responsibility to keep their AV up-to-date and run regular scans to keep these types of malware off your machine. Along with this, regular back-ups are also important so that if you do become infected you can easily recover.