Schools don't like spam, board members told

Bedord County Board of Education chairman Barry Cooper has a warning for employees of the school system when it comes to their e-mail.

"Don't send it, unless you don't mind just anybody reading it."

The comment came after a policy governing e-mails -- and providing that they be archived -- was brought before the board for approval at the Thursday night meeting.

The policy on "Acceptable Use" has been in place, but has largely dealt with acceptable internet use and what was forbidden, from sending or displaying offensive messages or images to violation of copyright laws.

"This is a revision," said Ed Gray, school superintendent, who added that some of the revisions were merely to clean up the language.

The big change, he said, was about e-mail.

"We will now archive all non-spam e-mails, then purge them after one year," said Gray. "If they (school employees) utilize the school system e-mail, they have no privacy. They need to be cognizant that they don't own that e-mail account."

Even when the user deletes his or her e-mail, they aren't gone forever. The document is automatically sent to the archives.

The change was made to the policy to bring it into accordance with governmental records management rules, Gray said, although there are no state or federal regulations determining how long the e-mails must be kept -- yet.

"You only have to keep them if there is pending litigation," he added.

The policy changes were approved unanimously.

The archiving job could be more difficult than it seems on the surface. Later in the meeting, Gray brought up another e-mail issue the school system is facing -- spam. The system gets more than 55,000 unwanted commercial e-mails a day.

Gray presented a chart Thursday night to the board meeting which detailed how many e mails were received, and of those, how many were spam.

"It's a real problem," he said.

Gray said teachers complain about having to wade through the junk -- about 98 percent of their incoming e-mails -- to get to the items they need.

"We have the best spam filter there is," he said. "But no filter gets all of it."

On the chart he handed out, he listed tips for reducing spam, including:

* Never reply or unsubscribe

* Don't use auto-preview

* Don't use your work e-mail for personal business

* Don't give out your e-mail except to reputable companies

* Don't register your work e-mail account online unless it is a work-related site and can be trusted.

Gray also suggested using the Outlook e-mail software from the Office 2003 or 2007 suites and not the web-based version.