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18 comments on “Can my school see my emails and messages?”

  1. There is a simple rule of thumb here. If an organization such as a school or business gives you an email address only use it for whatever you do for that organization and not for personal emails. Email address are easy to get.

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  2. “However, at home, they use their university faculty email addresses to send and receive email.”

    I also do this so that I can “work” even when I’m not on my work computer, but I also have personal email addresses accessible on the same computer, for personal communication. Doesn’t make sense giving your friends and family your work email address because you may change your work someday.

    No one who’s familiar with webmail should be falling into that trap. I know some people who’re stuck in the old ways of Outlook Express and Microsoft Outlook, who believe an email address is attached to a computer. When they configure an account, that’s the only way they know to do email from that machine, therefore the idea of using different email addresses for different things does not even enter into their reasoning.

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  3. If they are faculty members at a public institution, their email account and all its emails could possibly fall under an open records request. So, I would avoid putting anything too personal in an email to that account.

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  4. My school uses it’s own domain (@j***s.org) on outlook. They have disclosed that they filter all of the emails coming and going for key words (like drugs or suicide), however, is there a way for me to find out if and when they do look at my emails and to see what key words they may be looking for. I say this because when doing assignments on drugs, alcohol or anything like that the school often gives out punishments without looking at the emails

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  5. Great article, thank you very much for writing it.
    I have a question, my university gives us an email with a custom domain in G suite, something like “@***.com”, through that email we have access to storage in Drive, Photos, etc. In the same way we have access to office 365 (One drive) whenever we use the institutional mail.
    Is it possible that my university can see the things that I save in Drive, Photos or One drive?
    And if I log in to Windows or mac OS using my institutional email, is it possible that they can monitor my computer?.
    Thank you very much.

    Reply

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