Non-Technical Issues for Technical Coordinators

Postmaster "duties"

Postmaster is someone who is responsible for mail maintenance on a network. If you plan on running your own mail server, however, you need to make some decisions as to what you are going to do as postmaster.

As postmaster, your mail server may send you copies of mail that is sent by your users that is not properly addressed. If your users start to send mail without proper mail addresses, you can find your self inundated with messages from the system marked "Undeliverable Mail". Dealing with each message may quickly become an overwhelming task. You may wish to prepare some standard messages that you send to users who are bouncing mail.

You might set a limit to the number of bounced mail messages a person can create. Determine a course of action to take when that limit is reached. For example, if you receive 10 bounced mail messages created by a single user, you might require that person to attend a workshop on E-mail.

Privacy

E-mail that goes out over the Internet, whether generated from a mail client or a netnews client, is not private. Mail on your local server may need to be reviewed to solve a problem that arises, to review for policy violations or to determine the source of a huge file taking up your server disk space. In order to avoid claims of privacy violation, consider including a statement in your network policy explaining the absence of privacy and the reasons why privacy can't be guaranteed.

Mail / News Forgery

Be aware that some mail and news programs do not authenticate that the e-mail address in the "from" field is in fact the person creating the mail. This type of loophole can lead to forgery.

Anonymous logins

Many network programs come with default user logins. Netware's GUEST login is an example. You might consider eliminating these types of logins. Widespread use of anonymous login makes accountability on the network difficult to manage.

Chain Letters

Chain letters don't have to be illegal to present a hassle on a network. They cost the network money in that they take up bandwidth with not much in the way of redeeming value. Problems occur when the traffic that is generated by these posts takes up not only bandwidth but also disk storage space for users' mail. Chain letters can also generate a large number of bounced messages that you as a Postmaster may have to deal with. They can also result in the Postmaster (YOU!) getting mail from the recipients of the letters who do not appreciate getting the extra mail. Chain letters that advertise "get rich quick" schemes may be illegal.

There is no real way to prevent users from sending chain letters, but you may wish to establish a policy that states what will happen if someone is caught sending them.

Flames or Attack Mail

Flames are mail or news posts that attack the recipient personally. In a school environment a common flame is "you keep away from my boy/girl friend or else". One way to deal with flames is to stipulate a policy where the first step is to recommend the flame recipient to politely ask the sender not to send them any more mail. If this does not work then the person being flamed can notify the postmaster to deal with the problem. Encourage anyone receiving attack mail to keep copies of flames to document the problem.

Offensive Material

The freedom of expression that makes the Internet so powerful may result in users finding material that offends them. You have several options and combinations of options as to how to handle this.

• Limit access to Internet software applications to approved individuals
• Provide human monitoring for all Internet capable machines.
• Require a signed copy of the organization's Network Acceptable Use Policy.

Install Software on Server

By installing your Internet software clients on a local file server instead of on the workstations you can limit who can run the software. This is fairly simple to do on most servers.

Staff Monitoring

Placing the Internet capable machines in a lab where there is always a staff person on duty can limit most of the problems. As more and more school machines become available that can run Internet clients, monitoring becomes an issue. Who keeps the students off a computer in a classroom when there is no one there because the teacher is at lunch, in a class in another room, in conference or otherwise busy?

Copyright and web pages

Most web browsers have the capacity to save published files to the local machine. Both schools and libraries should post abstracts of the relevant copyright laws at appropriate places in their facilities. Students and other users should be made aware of the implications of capturing data from the network. Conventions have been established for citing electronic sources.

FTP and other software downloading implications

FTP or File Transfer Protocol is one way to download files from the Internet. Most Web browsers have this capacity built into them also. The ability to obtain files over an Internet connection is a very powerful component of the net. You can move data files from one location to another quickly. A teacher can download a student's work from home to review it there. A teacher who is out sick, can upload worksheets, which the office can print out, for the substitute. Upgrades of programs can be obtained quickly and easily. Trial versions of software can be downloaded for evaluation without the expense of mailing disks and documentation. All of these are high points. The low points are outlined in the following sections.

Viruses in attachments

Viruses can be a problem any time, but as soon as they become established in networks, they can spread very quickly.

Virus's can invade your network through a number of paths. They can be in files users download (d/l) from other servers on the Internet. They can be stuck to E-mail attachments as executables or as macros for various programs.

You should be running a virus scan for your network, and continuously update it.

One of the best things you can do to protect yourself from viruses is to implement an in depth program of backups for servers and workstations.

At a minimum you should make archival copies of your basic workstation setups onto a back up system so that you can restore the workstations easily. (This also helps if the students get creative with a system setup).

You also need to make plans to back up any network servers that you run. Here again you should look into specialized back up hardware / software to back up the network information as well as just applications.

Software Types

There are several types of software that are available on the net. One of the very useful types is referred to as FREEWARE. This is software that the author has written and then released for public usage at no charge. These are often small utilities but sometimes are complex pieces of software. Pegasus E-mail is available as a variation of this. It is available free but if you want printed documentation you have to pay for it.

SHAREWARE is another way that software is distributed. This is software that is freely available to try. The user is asked to register the software after an evaluation period. Depending on the author, the software may come in an enhanced version after registration.

Commercial software is software that is not available for use until it has been paid for. This is software that has been purchased at a local software store, mail-order store, or from the publisher itself. Most commercial software can be ordered and downloaded over the Internet. Companies with "secure web pages" will take your credit card number, verify it electronically, and then allow you to download the commercial version over the web.

None of the above software distribution methods presents a problem for a site as long as the basic principles are followed. There are however some things that you need to be careful of. The first is that commercial software is sometimes loaded onto an Internet site by mistake or deliberately. Use of this software can violate copyright laws. Software companies have become very aggressive in going after both people who upload commercial software to public sites and sites that make use of commercial software in violation of copyright laws regarding distribution and/or number of copies of an application that are being run at a site. Federal courts have fined companies in the hundreds of thousands of dollars as well as issuing jail sentences for violations. As a technical coordinator you are subject to some personal liability in this regard.

The are several ways you can protect yourself. One thing to do is to use the "It looks too good to be true" rule. If you obtain a piece of software that looks too slick to be anything but commercial then there is a good chance that it is commercial. Check the files that came with it for READ.ME or REGISTER.DOC or similar files. If there is nothing about how to contact the author, than you would be safest not using the program. If these files are present but you still are in doubt, contact the author or check out a related News Group for more information. If you run software tracking programs (these are programs that limit the number of users of a given program to those number of licenses that you have), are maintaining a file system that contains copies of your licenses and are only running licensed versions of software, then you have nothing to worry about with regard to copyrights.

Chat

Internet Chat is a way for Internet users to communicate in real time over the net. This in itself is not bad but can eat up network bandwidth and computing resources quickly. You may wish to restrict the use of "chat lines" on your system. Some schools in the state only allow the use of chat after regular school hours unless a student is with a teacher working on a project that requires it.

Gaming

The use of the net for games is one of the things that drove Internet development in its early years. Multi-player games can, as with chat lines, eat up precious computer resources. The temptation to download games and then "try them out" on the site's computer is also a big temptation to students. Installing game programs on site computers can be a source of viruses. The install programs may also cause problems with the various configuration files on a workstation. Users who load game programs onto a local network server can rapidly eat up the server disk storage space. Some possible solutions include:

1. "NO GAMES." (notice the period after the word games. This is pronounced phonetically: "NO GAMES, PERIOD") This is a simple solution but may be more extreme than you want or need.
2. "No Games during school hours" This helps to keep your resources free during the day but does not deal with file clutter on workstations or servers.
3. No Internet Games during the day, No game files installed on server disk space, only designated machines may be used for "evaluating" shareware games after school hours.

Each of these options should have a published set of consequences for user violations such as were mentioned earlier in the E-mail section.

Acceptable Use Policies

A recurring theme in the items above is to set rules for network usage and make them clear to everyone before they start to use the network. To do this you should plan on developing an ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY (AUP) for your site, a general AUP that everyone must agree to in writing, and a published list of detailed rules and what the consequences of violating them are.