Printer Friendly Version

GSW E-mail Policies

Accepted by Administrative Council April 20, 2004

A. Users

 An individual member of Georgia Southwestern State University community, faculty, staff, student, or an organization may be issued an email account. This email account will remain valid so long as the individual is currently employed or enrolled at Georgia Southwestern State University. Email accounts of students who attend spring semester will remain active during summer term regardless of enrollment status during the summer term.

B. Cautions

 The proper use of the email account is ultimately the responsibility of the individual under whose name it has been assigned. Therefore, it is the user's responsibility to guard his/her password and not share his/her email account and password with others.

All email is subject to disclosure under the Georgia Open Records Act and therefore any individual could at any time request to see copies of any or all of the e-mails on your computer. Users should exercise extreme caution in using email to communicate confidential or sensitive matters, and should not assume that email is private and confidential.  It is especially important that users are careful to send messages only to the intended recipient(s).  Particular care should be taken when using the "reply" command during email correspondence.

Since there is no guarantee that electronic mail is authentic, it is prudent to be somewhat skeptical of the "From:" addresses that appear in messages. Mail between campus mail systems or from off-campus can very easily be "spoofed", i.e. the message is sent in such a way that it appears to be from someone other than the true sender. Anyone who has doubts about the identity of the sender of any message should communicate with the purported sender by some other means (e.g. phone) to confirm the content of the message.

Email at GSW is not encrypted (it is sent over the network in clear text). Exercise caution when sending personal and confidential information. 

C. Restrictions

Email account limits are set to 10 MB for faculty & staff and 8 MB for students. The user will receive a warning when the maximum size limit of the email account is being approached. If the maximum size limit on your account is reached, your account will no longer be able to receive mail.

Avoid sending email attachments when ever possible. Especially avoid sending email attachments to large groups of individuals. Do not send an attached word processing document for information that can easily be provided in the text message of your email. Sending attachments with extensions of .com, .exe, or .bat are prohibited, and are blocked by GSW email servers. Sending .zip (compressed) files is allowed, however caution is recommended in opening .zip files. For more information about opening and creating zipped files visit http://www.winzip.com/aboutzip.htm. 

Email attachments should not exceed 8MB (8192 K). Exceeding this limit will cause problems with the GSW email server(s) and will result in disabling of the sender's email account. Eudora users will be warned when attempting to send a rather large attachment. Adhere to this warning if the attachment exceeds above limit. If faculty/staff need to exchange large files with colleagues request from OIIT that a folder share be set up on your computer for that purpose. Large attachments may also easily be zipped before sending. Never, under any circumstance open an attachment (even from someone you know) unless you are expecting it and the email includes specific information about the attachment, including a proper subject and a message in the text body that identifies the nature of the attachment and specific information on why you are receiving it. Faculty and staff should regularly review and delete attachments stored in the attachments folder which are typically located in C:\Program Files\Qualcomm\Eudora\Attach.

The signature at the bottom of an email should only contain information relevant to the recipient of the email. The signature does not need to include the sender's email address unless the sender is sending a message to a listserv. The use of quotations and gems of wisdom in signatures of emails that concern official University business is prohibited.     

An email should always contain information in the subject and text body. An email that does not contain a relevant subject or that merely contains an attachment with no message should be considered suspicious and deleted.  

D. Misuse

The sending of offensive messages to individuals on the network or inappropriate use of the Internet and other networks to which Georgia Southwestern State University is directly or indirectly connected will be deemed abuse of computer privileges. When discovered, the abuser's email account will be terminated immediately. The use of another individual's email account without his/her expressed consent will be viewed as theft and as computer fraud, and could result in sanctions outlined in Section 7 of the Georgia Southwestern State University Computer and Network Use Policy http://www.gsw.edu/~oiit/policies/computerpolicy.html .

E. Technical Support

If you have a problem with your email account, please call tech support at 931-2074.

Printer Friendly Version