INTRODUCTION

ACK provides its staff, faculty, and students with electronic communications tools, including an Email System. This Usage Policy, which governs use of the ACK’s Email System, applies to email use at all ACK’s facilities as well as at remote locations, including but not limited to staff, faculty, and students’ homes.

ACK’s email rules and policies apply to full-time employees, part-time employees, independent contractors, consultants, suppliers, clients, and other third parties. Any employee who violates ACK’s email rules and policies is subject to disciplinary or legal action.

Email Exists for Business and Academic Purposes

ACK allows email access primarily for business and academic purposes. Users may use the email system for personal use only in accordance with this policy. Users are prohibited from using personal email software (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) for business or personal communications at ACK facilities.

1 Authorized Personal Use of Email

Users may use email to communicate with spouses, children, and other family members. Users’ personal use of email is limited to work breaks only, and may not use email during otherwise productive business hours.

Users are prohibited from using email to operate a business, conduct an external job search, solicit money for personal gain, campaign for political causes or candidates, or promote or solicit funds for a religious or other personal cause.

2 Username & Password

Your ACK login username and default password is initially created for you to access your email and login to the campus network. You are strongly requested to change your default password at the earliest opportunity. To change your password while logged on to ACK Windows machine: press the Ctrl+Alt+Del keys simultaneously, click on Change Password and follow the onscreen instructions.

3 Email communications expectations

Email users are expected to check their official email address on a frequent and consistent basis in order to stay current with college communications and in recognition that certain communications may be time-critical.

4 Email Quota

The email quota is the amount of email (including attachments) that a user can store on the central email server. The mailbox storage limits have been set to warn users when their mailbox has reached or exceeded 80% in size.

Once the quota limit has been reached, users will still be able to receive mail, but will no longer be able to send mail until the mailbox has been cleaned out and brought back below the storage limit.

5 Attachments

The maximum size of any email attachment is 10MB. In our efforts to cut down the number of viruses received through email, several mail security measures have been implemented. Any attachments which may contain a virus will be removed by the mail server and a notice that the attachment was removed will be sent to the intended recipients.

• Items in the “Deleted Items” folder that are older than 30 days will be purged.
• Items in the “Junk E-mail” folder that are older than 30 days will be purged.
• Items in the “Sent Items” folder that are older than 90 days will be purged.

6 Number of Recipients

Users other than students may address up to only 30 recipients in one email. Students have a maximum of 10 recipients limit in one email.

7 Encryption Keys

Users are not authorized to use any encryption devices or encryption keys.

8 Privacy

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 email 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.

9 Banned Activities

• Users are prohibited from using email to engage in activities or transmit content that is harassing, discriminatory, menacing, threatening, obscene, defamatory (harming another person’s reputation by lies), or in any way objectionable or offensive.
• Users are prohibited from using email to Send, Receive, Solicit, Print, Copy, or Reply to:
  • Text or images that disparage others based on their race, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, ancestry, or age.
  • Jokes (text or images) based on sex, sexual orientation, race, age, religion, national origin, ancestry, or disability.
  • Messages that is disparaging or defamatory, spread gossip, rumors, and innuendos about employees, clients, suppliers, or other outside parties.
• Confidential, proprietary, and personal information must be protected.
• Unless authorized to do so, users are prohibited from using email to transmit confidential information to outside parties. Users may not access, send, receive, solicit, print, copy, or reply to confidential or proprietary information about ACK, employees, faculty, students, clients, suppliers, and other business associates.
• Confidential information includes but is not limited to client lists, credit card numbers, performance reviews, salary details, trade secrets, passwords, and information that could embarrass ACK and users were it to be made public.

10 Email Monitoring

ACK has the legal right to monitor usage of the email system, using the least intrusive method available. When monitoring is deemed necessary, users will be notified of management’s decision to monitor, and will be provided with details of what is being monitored, why and how.

11 Professional Tone

Users should use the same level of care and draftsmanship in email transmission as they do with respect to business letters. Emails should be professionally written with a professional tone.

12 Netiquette

“Netiquette” is network etiquette, the do’s and don’ts of online communication:

• Do not type in all caps. Typing in all caps is considered yelling or screaming online. Various studies on the topic reflect that it is more difficult and takes longer to read text that is typed in all caps.
• Do not leave the Subject: field blank. Always fill in the Subject: field with a brief and concise description of the content of your email. This helps others organize emails. Some email readers will put email that does not have a subject in the junk folder.
• Refrain from formatting your email with colored text and background colors or images in your day-to-day communications. Your color and formatting choices can make your emails impossible to read. Using large background graphics will make the email take longer to display.
• On those rare occasions where it is necessary to send a group of people the very same email, as a courtesy to those you are sending to, please list all of the recipients’ email addresses in the Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) field. When an email address is designated in the BCC field, the recipient will get a copy of the email while his or her email address remains invisible to the other recipients of the email. This shows that you respect the privacy of others.
• Do not forward jokes, “chain letters” or unimportant emails to people without their permission. Doing this may fill up their inbox, use other’s resources unnecessarily and may cause other important email to bounce.
• Do not forward virus warnings! Forwarding of virus warnings from friends are generally always hoaxes. Especially if they tell you to forward to everyone you know. Delete those emails and do not forward them.
• Be nice to others. When you communicate electronically, you don’t have the opportunity to use facial expressions, gestures, and tone of voice to communicate your meaning; words are all you’ve got. Choose them carefully.
• When you communicate through email, your words are written. Chances are they’re stored somewhere where you have no control over them. Any message you send could be saved or forwarded by its recipient.
• Hard drives fail more than people think, save important files to more than one location. Other than your computer’s hard drive, you can burn a file to a CD, or put it on a USB storage device.

13 Record Retention

Email messages create written business records, and are subject to ACK’s written and consistently applied rules and policies for retaining and deleting business records.

14 Violations

These guidelines are intended to provide ACK email users with general examples of acceptable and unacceptable use of ACK’s email system. A violation of this policy may result in disciplinary or legal action.

15 Policy Review

ACK senior management will review this policy as needed. Any questions about the policy should be directed to the IT Manager or Support Services Director.