Use of Email

 

The University of Montevallo provides electronic mail services to students, faculty, staff and others affiliated with the University. It encourages the use of email in support of instruction, research, and public service.  Students are urged to make extensive use of e-mail to communicate with others.  Incidental personal use is acceptable, provided such use does not excessively burden the electronic mail system.

Specific Prohibitions

All University email users are expected to use e-mail services responsibly, i.e. to comply with all applicable local, state, and federal laws, and with other University policies. If there is reason to believe that an individual's e-mail account is being used in a violation of law or University policy, or if an account is used in a way that threatens to disrupt service to other users, Computer Services may restrict or suspend that account's access to e-mail services, until Computer Services is reasonably assured that the illegal or disruptive use of the account will cease.

It is not possible to provide a comprehensive list of all possible violations. However, the following list of activities is specifically prohibited:

• Use of e-mail to threaten or harass individuals on or off-campus
• Use of a false e-mail address (i.e., mail "spoofing")
• Any attempt to disrupt another person's ability to use their computer account
• Any material use of the University of Montevallo’s computer systems to support a "for-profit" activity
• Initiating or forwarding of "chain letters"
• Violations of copyright law

Privacy

The University of Montevallo will make reasonable efforts to ensure the privacy of your e-mail and other computer files.  An exception is undeliverable mail that is routed to the "postmaster" of an e-mail system, who may need to inspect the mail in order to forward, return or otherwise dispose of such messages.

Note, however, that transmission of mail is logged. The logs are accessible to authorized Computer Services staff, and can be used in the investigation of possible e-mail abuse. Users of e-mail should be aware that, even though Computer Services personnel may not intentionally view others' e-mail, the contents of e-mail messages may sometimes be visible to network and systems personnel during the performance of their duties.

Authenticity of E-mail

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. On-campus as well as off-campus messages 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.

 

Please also review the Revised Email Storage Guidelines that were adopted by the University in January 2006.

 

Updated January 2006