Campus Email
Statement
of Responsibility:
Users agree not to use the Rollins site for sale, trade or other
commercial purposes. Communications should be courteous; all campus policies
that apply to written communications also apply to e-mail. Users also may not
post or transmit information or materials that would violate rights of any third
party or which contains a virus or other harmful component. At Rollins, any
distribution of or participation in Internet chain letters, unsolicited mass
emailing (spamming), or transmission of e-mail hoaxes of any kind is
prohibited. Furthermore, All members of the Rollins community are encouraged to
apply to the Internet/Email the same code of conduct found in our Student
Handbook and other College documents. Rollins College reserves the right to
cancel or suspend e-mail privileges from users who violate these policies.
Overview:
The information below will provide guidance to e-mail/Internet
users who confront or consider mass e-mailings, which may be illegal or are
prohibited by the College, the Internet community and/or Federal agencies. The
remainder of this document is organized as follows:
Mass electronic mailing: Spam
(unsolicited commercial e-mail) is the Internet version of "junk e-mail." It is
an attempt to deliver a message, over the Internet, to someone who would not
otherwise choose to receive it. Almost all spam is commercial advertising.
Spamming by commercial organizations (even if legal) to our students, faculty
and staff is strongly discouraged. An article in the October 31st issue of the
Chronicle of Higher Education reports Harvard University's fight against
spamming and how the process can clog an organization's computing/e-mail
network. For more information on Principles and Guidelines:
http://www.rollins.edu/it/policies/computeruse.shtml#Principles.
Chain
letters: the College discourages all forms of participation
in chain letters, because this violates policies established by
the Internet community. The numerous problems with chain letters
have been compounded by availability of e-mail, bulletin boards
and web pages. The USPS Inspection Service (http://www.usps.gov/websites/depart/inspect/chainlet.htm)
states chain letters are "illegal if they request money or
other items of value and promise a substantial return to the participants,"
and "Chain letters don't work because the promise that all
participants in a chain letter will be winners is mathematically
impossible."
New
Spam law:
A new law was passed this year called the Spam Act of 2004. Its
main provisions are:
1) That in mass mailings to solicit business or provide
information, recipients have the ability to "opt-out" of future
mailings and
2) That subjects not be deceptive
Recently, an office of the College sent a solicitation for a program
to an outside group of people using the subject "Collaboration".
This in no way reflected the content of the message and there was
no opt-out option. An alum brought it to my attention and we had
College counsel review it. The ruling was that we should be following
the spirit of the law and this message was most likely in violation
on both counts. I should say that this was an innocent mistake and
probably a good thing that it was brought to our attention.
How it impacts us:
1) This doesn't apply to e-mail sent to faculty, staff
or students because by being a part of the Rollins community, they
understand and are expected to read e-mail and it's a normal part
of the operation of the College
2) It may not apply to things like reunion notices
and such since one could argue that having been a member of the
Rollins community, these are follow-ups to their participation,
but we should think carefully about these communications. I would
guess we already have procedures in place where if someone asks
to have communications stopped, we do it.
3) It does apply to anything we solicit money for in
exchange for services or goods
4) It applies to invitations we send for speakers and
programs (whether we charge admission or not)
5) It probably applies to the admissions process- we
should be sure in all programs that we give prospective students
the ability to opt-out of e-mail
6) Even without a law, the last thing we want to do
is bother people to an extent that they create an e-mail filter
where everything from "Rollins" just goes to their trash bin! It's
really in our best interest to let them opt-out rather than tune-out!
What your office should look into:
To summarize what you should do:
1) If your office sends e-mail to outside constituencies,
especially non-alums:
a) the subject
of the e-mail should accurately represent its contents
b) you should provide
at minimum, a link to an e-mail message at the bottom of your message
that allows someone to send a note back asking to be removed from
the mailing list for those types of events or solicitations. Since
we don't have a centralized system yet, the message should very
clearly reflect your office, for example:
To opt out of future mailings from xyz office on our abc lecture
series, please click here. You would then link to an email message
back to your office stating the opt-out request.
2) If you're sending e-mail to alumni, parents or other
off-campus constituencies, be mindful of these guidelines. If your
messages are perceived as spam, eventually people will push back
and ask that they not be bothered. Keeps subject appropriate and
messages to the point, providing people an option to get additional
information if they are interested.
Comparing e-mail and U.S. mail:
You may recall that a few years ago, the government mandated that
you could subscribe to a "no junk mail" service for your U.S. mail.
In the last couple of years, phone solicitations have been limited.
Exceptions to both of these were granted to organizations that had
the name in their database as someone who requested information
and charitable and political organizations. So, we're probably fine
on e-mails that share information about the College; the gray area
is when we solicit the community for products and services. I'm
sure this law will be tightened up in the next few years as the
rules about paper, phone and e-mail solicitations merge.
How to handle this operationally:
If you're maintaining a list in your e-mail program, delete the
person from the list. You may want to have multiple lists in your
office for each type of program you do so opting out of one doesn't
remove the person from all your communications.
If you're using Access to pull e-mail addresses from Banner, include
the ID in your query and add "and not Rnumber" to the selection
so that person won't be included. As above, if your office sends
e-mail out for multiple programs, you might want to clone the query
and maintain separate queries for each type of program or solicitation.
Detection and prevention of e-mail spamming. DO NOT send
"remove" (or any) messages to a spammer. It simply validates your e-mail address
for future spammings. Programs, which implement this type of malicious activity,
are in widespread use. No legal remedies are available yet. Addresses for these
lists are gathered from the return addresses of postings to Internet mailing
lists. Rollins does not provide e-mail lists to any outside groups.
Know how to avoid unwillingly spreading spam. The U.S.
Department of Energy's Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CIAC) sends out
definitive advisories about computer security services whenever trouble is
spotted. For more information visit
http://HoaxBusters.ciac.org/.
Keep informed. Watch for updates from Rollins faculty
committees, Information Technology, our e-mail administrators, and the campus
Web page.
Be responsible. You can't get a virus by simply reading an e-mail.
Attachments, however, are another story. Do not click on an attachment unless
you know the sender and are confident in advance that the attachment is genuine.
Mail passing through our mail servers is scanned for files with unsafe file
extensions (as defined by Microsoft Corporation). These files could be
automatically executed by older, unpatched versions of Microsoft's mail clients:
Outlook and Outlook Express. Please see the Microsoft Knowledge base article
Q290497 for a list of these file extensions, and additions in
Q273507 and
Q311573.
Message parts with unsafe
file extensions or containing viruses, worms, or other malicious
software will be replaced by text warnings. If it is necessary to
transmit these files, please use another method (e.g., FTP) or encapsulate
or encrypt the files for transport (e.g., as ZIP archives).
Copyright: website material is the copyrighted or has the
protection of copyright law. No formal statement needs to be made for copyright
protection to have force. The information and images presented on a Web site
generally may not be reproduced or used without prior written permission. Users
might be able to view and download material from a site for educational or
purely personal, non-commercial home use. To reproduce, republish, upload, post,
transmit, distribute or publicly display material from another website get
written permission.
Password: you should change your e-mail password on a
regular basis. For more information on changing your Rollins email password
click here.
Selling term papers: the October 31, 1997 issue of the
Chronicle of Higher Education (http://www.chronicle.com) has an article on
Boston University's lawsuit against companies selling term papers over the
Internet. Selling or buying term papers over the internet is strictly forbidden
at Rollins College.
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