Educause Security Discussion mailing list archives
Re: Email Forwarding
From: "Volz, Donald D" <don.volz () TXSTATE EDU>
Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2011 09:21:50 -0600
We allow forwarding and even provide self-service tools to facilitate it. We also employ many of the measures already discussed in this thread to reduce the risk that external mail providers will block mail from our domain. And I agree that the issue of internal spamming is separate and distinct. We have many users who would not think of forwarding their mail to an external provider, but effectively use their Outlook or Entourage clients to filter/delete "announcement" type messages without ever reading them. Quite frankly, mail forwarding is such a core feature of any mail system (whether on the client side or server side, whether through automated rules or manual selection/forward) that I can think of no technical means to effectively prevent it from happening. Thus, we decided against fighting that losing battle and now focus instead on educating users about the implications of mail forwarding for ALL users, such as: - university NOT responsible for non-receipt due to spam blocks by external providers, - policy prohibits transmitting confidential information via unencrypted email, - message recall functionality is crippled and therefore unreliable, - personal/external email accounts of those who forward are by default "in-scope" for records preservation orders and e-Discovery requests/subpoenas, etc. With apologies to Quinn for somewhat hijacking his thread, I have a related question that I think is germane. For those of you that allow automated mail forwards, what happens to the forward when the owning user separates from your institution and their email account is de-provisioned? Is the forward deactivated at the point of de-provisioning? Do you allow the forward to persist for some period of time, such as for departing faculty members or recent degree recipients who may have broadly published their campus email address as part of ongoing research activities? Are their different rules or practices for different affiliates, such as alumni, retirees, fired employees, etc.? Best, Don ______________________________________________ Don Volz Special Asst to the VPIT Texas State University Email: don.volz () txstate edu Voice: 512-245-9650 FAX: 512-245-1226 -----Original Message----- From: Joel Rosenblatt [mailto:joel () COLUMBIA EDU] Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 11:41 AM Subject: Re: Email Forwarding We support email forwarding on demand as a self service function. Our email forwarding occurs after our spam filtering, which I would highly recommend as a good thing :-) As far as "locally generated" spam, our policy is that all official communication from the University will come from and be sent to the University supplied email address - not reading your university email is not an excuse for not knowing something. I have gotten requests to get off University email lists (for example, an email sent do all employees from HR about a HR issue) - my response to those is get another job - if you work for the University, you will get email from the University. My 2 cents Joel Rosenblatt Joel Rosenblatt, Manager Network & Computer Security Columbia Information Security Office (CISO) Columbia University, 612 W 115th Street, NY, NY 10025 / 212 854 3033 http://www.columbia.edu/~joel Public PGP key http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x90BD740BCC7326C3 --On Friday, February 18, 2011 8:04 AM -0800 Joe St Sauver <joe () OREGON UOREGON EDU> wrote:
Geoffrey mentioned: # At Wayne State we do allow forwarding, and this has indeed caused us grief on # occasion, but it's unlikely we'll turn it off any time soon. I maintain a blog # on internal IT-related things, and suggested, a few months ago, that we forbid # forwarding. You can read the comments--they are instructive: # # http://blogs.wayne.edu/proftech/2010/are-you-part-of-the-problem/ Looking at that article and comments, I'm seeing two key themes, I think: -- forwarding was causing problems for Wayne State because forwarding was happening pre-filtering, and when spam was forwarded to third party providers, and then reported by users, it was "charged" against Wayne State, even though all you did was dutifully forward the user's mail as they'd asked you to do -- some users preferred third party accounts because of things like excessive amounts of "intra-spam" to which they'd been involuntarily subscribed We dealt with the first issue in part here at UO by offering users the ability to forward AFTER spam filtering had happened (e.g., via procmail rather than via a traditional .forward file). That approach really knocks forwarded spam down to trivial levels, assuming you have an effective filtering solution in place. The second issue, intra-spam, is one that each site needs to wrestle with themselves, but I think policies that mandate either (a) confirmed opt-in lists only, or (b) approval by a designated very senior person (for rare involuntary everyone-gets-this-one-whether-they-want-it-or-not mailings) can do a lot to eliminate issues with unwanted intra-spam. Regards, Joe Disclaimer: all opinions strictly my own
Joel Rosenblatt, Manager Network & Computer Security Columbia Information Security Office (CISO) Columbia University, 612 W 115th Street, NY, NY 10025 / 212 854 3033 http://www.columbia.edu/~joel Public PGP key http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x90BD740BCC7326C3
Current thread:
- Email Forwarding Shamblin, Quinn (Feb 17)
- Re: Email Forwarding Mclaughlin, Kevin (mclaugkl) (Feb 17)
- Re: Email Forwarding Shamblin, Quinn (Feb 17)
- Re: Email Forwarding Theresa Rowe (Feb 23)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: Email Forwarding Joe St Sauver (Feb 17)
- Re: Email Forwarding Shamblin, Quinn (Feb 17)
- Re: Email Forwarding Geoffrey Steven Nathan (Feb 18)
- Re: Email Forwarding Joe St Sauver (Feb 18)
- Re: Email Forwarding Joel Rosenblatt (Feb 18)
- Re: Email Forwarding Geoffrey Steven Nathan (Feb 19)
- Re: Email Forwarding Volz, Donald D (Feb 19)
- Re: Email Forwarding David Grisham (Feb 19)
- Re: Email Forwarding Joel Rosenblatt (Feb 19)
- Re: Email Forwarding Mclaughlin, Kevin (mclaugkl) (Feb 19)
- Re: Email Forwarding Joel Rosenblatt (Feb 19)
- Re: Email Forwarding Mclaughlin, Kevin (mclaugkl) (Feb 19)
- Re: Email Forwarding Mclaughlin, Kevin (mclaugkl) (Feb 17)