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Information
FAQ
Your Lab School E-mail account
Can I use my school e-mail account for personal business?
In the early days of e-mail, work was the only place most people could get e-mail accounts, so people began to use them for all their personal and professional needs. Now, with dozens of available options for personal e-mail accounts (Google, Comcast, Earthlink, AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.), you are strongly encouraged to use one of them for your personal e-mail needs.
It is understood that some personal use of school computer resources will occur since neither our computers or network are locked down to prevent it, as is the case in most business computing environments. Such use is not prohibited as long as it does not interfere with the core educational mission of the Schools and complies with the Acceptable Use Policy.
However, using your school e-mail account for personal business has some actual and potential consequences worth thinking about:
How private is my school e-mail?
How careful are you with your password? Is it an obvious password like your phone number, pet name, letmein, or the default password you've never changed? Do you log out of your e-mail account and/or your user account when you step away from your computer? We see a lot of high-risk behavior by Lab folk in our travels around the school. These are the most likely ways your e-mail privacy will be compromised.
The Information Systems Group does not actively or passively monitor e-mail traffic on a routine basis. If circumstances arise that suggest a policy violation may be occurring, we only access users' e-mail files when formally directed to do so by the appropriate school administrator.
Every Lab computer user should review the Acceptable Use Policy posted on the Information Systems web pages. It contains specific language about privacy of online activities.
Which mail programs can school employees use?
We strongly recommend Apple's Mail program (the icon for this application is a postage stamp). It contains many features for managing your mail, including junk mail management, smart folders, and many more. The interface is clean and intuitive, and you can set it up to display mail in a way that makes sense to you.
Microsoft's Entourage is also supported on a limited basis (i.e., we don't write documentation for it).
Eudora is in its sunset phase as the vendor has been bought out by another company and the current version is terminal. Support for Eudora will end in June of 2008. Current Eudora users must transition to another mail program before then.
Webmail is available from any Internet-connected computer, but is not meant to be your primary mail client. It lacks speed and features local mail clients offer. Use webmail when you are off site or the computer you most often use is not available to you.
Why should I use a local mail client instead of Webmail for my daily use?
Apple Mail and Entourage save mail to your hard drive while leaving a copy on the mail server (thus your mail is "local" to your computer). Once the mail is on your hard drive, accessing it is much faster than Webmail. Webmail is also a "bare bones" program designed primarily for accessing mail from computers other than the one you typically use; as such, it lacks many mail management features.
What happens to my e-mail account when I no longer work for or attend the Laboratory Schools?
If you retire from the Schools, we will maintain your account indefinitely unless you tell us not to. You will be removed from all mailing lists, however.
If you leave the school for other reasons, your accounts will be closed two weeks after your instructional or administrative duties cease, not when your contract expires.
Terminated employees’ accounts are closed immediately upon termination.
If you are graduating from the Schools, we will maintain your account name space, but not your account. We can help you forward your mail to an address of your choosing.
