As students in my school district entered classrooms at the
beginning of the 2012-2013 school year, they saw a big change in internet
access. They could no longer access
personal email accounts. The reason is
the district was unable to police what was received and sent through email
accounts. One of those elements is spam
email and the content contained in that spam email. Jeremy LaTrasse talks about what he calls a
spam email “epidemic” in his article “How to Make the World Safer for Email” on
ReadWrite.com. My students were not
happy to learn they couldn’t get into their accounts and would have to work
through student email accounts. While it
does pose a bit of an inconvenience, it allows educators to do their job and
protect students from potentially unsafe content that exists in the digital world. While LaTrasse says that “mass email senders
have a responsibility,” he also offers ways that email users can protect
themselves.
I think I’ll share the following with my students when we
discuss social aspects of media and the internet. It’s an excerpt from LaTrasses article, “How
to Make the World Safer for Email:”
- Use different passwords
for different logins.
- Never share personally
identifiable information (passwords, social security numbers, bank
accounts, etc.) via email: Your bank will never email you and ask you to
confirm your bank account number or the password you use to log into your
account.
- Remember, if it seems
too good to be true, it probably is. If you don't know who sent it, delete
it. If it was important, they'll send it again.
- Your operating system
will update itself if you allow it to; usually you just have to agree once
and it'll happen forever after.
- Look for email
personalization in messages. Marketers leverage first name/last name, and
other information you've shared with them when setting up an account to
help identify them as legitimate senders.
LaTrasse, J. “How to
Make the World Safer for Email.”
ReadWrite.com. 16 May 2013. Web. Retrieved 16 May 2013. <http://readwrite.com/2013/05/16/how-to-make-the-world-safer-for-email-trust>
I think that allowing students to use personal email accounts is not a great idea. Now adays, much like you said, you cannot control what spam comes into emails and what information is being shared. Also I would think that in the high school it is very common to have cyber bullying. If students were able to get onto their personal accounts it would be really hard to track who is sending what and to whom. Students should be only using school computers for school use not personal use!
ReplyDeleteI also think that those rules and guidelines are not only important to share with students but with adults as well. I find that I have to remind my mother all the time to be careful which emails she opens! :)