A Diploma and an Email Account for Life 112
ackthpt writes "Graduate college and you may gain an email address for life. This story in the Associated Press Get that ordinary 'grad' email or get the prestige of 'alumni' email address. Great for keeping in touch with your college buds, or "Schools can also be sure they'll get the latest e-mail addresses of their alums to send newsletters, invitations to events, perhaps even pitches for financial gifts." That 'financial gifts' is probably the kicker, after working with a 'college development office' for years, I learned how valuable it can be to shorten the distance it takes to reach out and touch someone. Of course, there's still the anonymity of that old ivy-covered-standby, Hotmail.U ;-)" Plus if you don't like your fellow grads, its easier to mass filter!
Government supplied e-mail account in Finland (Score:1)
Re:At Stanford... (Score:3)
Too bad they still don't get a life...
For life? (Score:1)
Alex Bischoff
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I've wondered why colleges didn't do this long ago (Score:2)
I graduated from University of California, Davis in the early 1990s, and had been using email for some five years up to that point. It was clear then that email was a preferred mode of communications, and it's only become more so.
I've been long stunned at the absolute lack of clue universities have had in not picking this up as a standard service. They already run services for thousands (or tens of thousands) of students, faculty, staff, and associated personnel. Keeping mail services open for alums wouldn't be much of an additional load, and, as a channel for communications and alumni donations, it should pay for itself many times over. Exceedingly short-sighted IMO.
And, no the Cal Aggie Alumni Association [ucdavis.edu] still lacks clue.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
This should be self-limiting (Score:2)
The direct benefit for the university is the income it can derive from alumni donations and through its marketing efforts. If the university abuses its resource to the point that alums desert it, they've managed it poorly.
If the service is implemented as a forwarder (common with other systems, such as the ACM/IEEE email systems), users are free to apply their own spam blocks to the service.
I'd expect the best option to be posting a periodic (monthly/quarterly) newsletter to recipients, selling sponsorship spots in this medium.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Re:that's it?! (Score:1)
Hey, Simon's Rock. Cool place :-)
Really, this should be a *duh* (Score:3)
Re:a bad idea (Score:2)
I have been on a couple dozen mailing lists, both commercial and hand-run over the years. I am still on about 5 different commerial mailing lists set up by companies to announce things. For about a year, I replied to most spam that I got, complaining and asking to be removed.
I even post to
To date, I do not run any major SPAM filters and only get about 4-5 spams a week. I simply trash them anymore, figuring that if I kept replying I would only get more.
Perhaps that is the way to avoid SPAM. Perhaps spammers remove your email address after a certain amount of time, figuring that there is no way anyone would ever keep their email address more than five years...
Re:Better options (Score:2)
Better options (Score:3)
Personally, I do not trust my financial institution^W^Wcollege to maintain my email address for years without constant donations. Even then, I find it likely that they'd drop it if they decided it wasn't worth the cash. With a professional institution, you have an instition usually far less financially driven than a university. You are paying yearly dues, but you're getting specific benefits for those, instead of lining the chancellor's bowling alley.
Cambridge does this too. (Score:1)
They are less likely to go under than some free forwarding services.
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Stabilty (Score:2)
Frankly stable addresses are a great thing, too often they turn over, become difficult to track, etc.
Since most degree-granting instutions are more stable them most dotcoms this is an appreciated service. In return for the occasionial spam from the school one gets a stable address.
The accounts aren't forced on anyone, they're a voluntary sign up folks are free to take advantage of. They're usually not real accounts either but rather fowarding services, thus there's no storage-space or connectivity issues.
Send mail to bubba@alum.beerdrinker.edu and it'll automagically get redirected to beerswiller@hotmail.com. Should Bubba decide to change to AOL our hypothetical graduate need only update the service at alum.beerdrinker.edu in order to get all of his email now forwarded to idrinkspud@aol.com, no need to mass-email all of his drinking buddies.
Once the email is forwarded one is of course free to treat it as any other email: filter-to-death, file-and-ignore, whatever. want to kill it completely? Then just cancel the service or redirect it to a dead account.
ps Other places offer like services, off the top of my head I can think of the Association for Computing Machinery & bigfoot.com. One is presumably around for the long-term, the other, well we'll see how their business model works out...
buy a domain (Score:2)
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Not sure I'd use such an email account much... (Score:1)
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Re:a bad idea (Score:2)
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The problem with... (Score:1)
It's basically a lifetime email address. I ONLY give it to friends that have a clue and won't use it to send me internet greeting cards, or "email this story to a friend" from a newspaper, or whatever. If it ever hits a spam database, I'm doomed for life.
Re:what about spam? (Score:1)
Stable email address wanted (Score:2)
had three major jobs in that time,
and seen bboards & ISPs rise and drop like flies.
An alumni organization is probably as stable as
anything else- one school been around since 1865
the other 1889. Funny, I don't use the two email-
addresses-for-life I got from them yet.
Re:that's it?! (Score:2)
And risk a rogue hacker like Kevin Mitnick causing $200 billion in damages??
spam magnet (Score:2)
Mmmmmmmmm. procmailicious.
Re:that's it?! (Score:5)
Re:Better options (offtopic) (Score:1)
let me guess, you go to Washington University in St. louis too.
The B-school hotel is what's really pissing me off though (and the fact that Eliot's become immortal)
Re:careful what you ask for (Score:1)
I'm not sure about that.. since some people before my number doesn't show up in the directory.
They don't appear to be giving it out to anyone (after about 5 years), but darned if every spammer on the planet doesn't have it anyway
I get spam but not much, compared to my onebox account... it's a matter of not putting your email on ebay (I used to have my cornell email there, but once I changed it, the spam coming directly to my cornell acct reduced)... and even sites like Slashdot.
Re:For life? (Score:1)
Don't jump to conclusions (Score:1)
I would be interested in hearing if anybody has had spam problems from their former Universities and if so what schools are they?
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Ohio State University policy (Score:1)
In other words, yay for common sense.
Re:Done here too (Score:2)
inital.surname.yearofentry
Namespace collisions? What namespace collisions?
Thank God the university development office don't run the university mail servers.
If its anything like the other 3... (Score:2)
I ended up buying a domain name, it's the only way to be remotely near sure.
On top of that, you can trace where spam/junk mailers got your address from, (enrole as slashdot@banksian.co.uk per se.)
Re:"Tiny resume" better w/ professional organizati (Score:2)
Arrogance is a risk; Harvard grads (for example) rarely state they went to Harvard unless pressed, asked, or it's on a resume, for just that reason. But there are times when it really does help. I never use my alumni e-mail (which does just forward to my regular e-mail) unless I'm applying for a job, but you can bet that when they see that address on a resume, they skip actually calling the school to see if I went there.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
different e-mail addresses for different hats (Score:2)
But the kicker about having several is that you can give out different e-mail addresses based on the role you're playing in that situation. An e-mail address is more than characters strung together, it is an identity, and often an affiliation with some organization.
For instance:
The fact that they all go the exact same place doesn't matter. They might not always. I might decide at some point to sort them differently or give them different priorities based on who the "To:" address in the headers is. If for some reason I cease to become a Debian maintainer in the future, I should no longer get Debian-related mail, and I could set up an auto-responder to indicate that I am no longer affiliated with the project.
So even though it may seem like just another forwarding e-mail address, I think that each one that captures a different capacity you serve is useful.
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Re:Stabilty (Score:2)
I know it's only an example, but it seems unrealistic...after all, who would even think of changing from some other service to AOHell?
Re:that's it?! (Score:2)
Re:If its anything like the other 3... (Score:2)
Don't be so sure... [org-domain...risign.org] :-(
I got a .org name. Now there is talk -- and yes I know it's a remote possibility but still -- of restricting .org's to registered non-profits.
What the bean counters should consider... (Score:2)
Then what about policies for dormant accounts? Do they get deleted after a while? Do you expire messages not read for x number of years?
It's a fairly good idea, but how's this? Give them a choice. Provide an actual INBOX for life or give them an easy way to forward that e-mail to their preferred mail address. But in either case, it should be something the student chooses. Let them know the service exists, but if they don't sign up for it, can it.
Can you say facetious? (Score:1)
"fuh-see-shuss"
Re:What the bean counters should consider... (Score:1)
heh. My school [smcvt.edu] has recently instituted an "email-for-life" policy, but it's not just forwarding. It's "keep the same address we gave you when you got here, not a special alumni domain address, and we'll keep maintaining the mail server". Incidentally, the IT staff was recently forced to institute a "any message older than a year in your inbox will be deleted" policy. Could just be coincidence, though.
can someone tell me (Score:2)
SpeedyGrl [speedygrl.com]
other uses for such addresses (Score:1)
Seems like it'd also be a useful weak authentication tool- to prove to employers or whoever that you really did go to the school you claim to be from...
Re:"Take Your Diploma and Get the Hell Out" (Score:2)
For those of you who aren't in the know, stolaf.edu and luther.edu are rivals of sorts. It's generally a good natured thing, even if those Minnesota people are snobs.
________________________
Re:Really, this should be a *duh* (Score:1)
This is similar to what Indiana University does. I just graduated and signed up for a yourname@alumni.indiana.edu [indiana.edu] email account. What it does is foward your e-mail to your actual e-mail account. However, it is totally seperate from the e-mail address that you have used during your college career. This is cool for looking up people who you had went to school with. It's also nice for the universty to get the big buck donations from the alumni.
Re:a bad idea (Score:2)
Re:At Stanford... (Score:1)
There are, however, situations where an account name or csalias will be changed or eliminated. This is normally decided on a case-by-case basis by the facilities committee or csd-cf (depending on the situation). One case where this may happen is when a faculty member has a last name matching an existing account or csalias belonging to a student or former student.
That's pretty insidious.
Re:Better options (Score:1)
What happens when ieee.org, acm.org, or whoever goes heels up?
Get your own freakin' address [gandi.net]!
I have a whole domain full of email addresses (that's a lifetime supply) and I can change service providers, taking my address with me, at the hat of a drop.
Re:that's it?! (Score:1)
You don't have those? I left the "institution" years ago and still have access to several.
At Stanford... (Score:1)
Re:If its anything like the other 3... (Score:1)
Domain hijaking (Score:2)
Privacy rights (Score:3)
Re:buy a domain (Score:1)
Or until your registrar hoses their database and sells your domain to a sex site hoster because they think you're overdue. Remember Webtechs.
Yet ANOTHER e-mail address? (Score:1)
Talk about your sysadminning nightmares... not only do you have to provide support for faculty, staff, and students, but also alumni? Not to mention the unsightly cholesterol that would clog the servers. Ten thousand new accounts per year, over a period of ten years... and of course no one would VOLUNTARILY clean out their in-boxen, trash, or sent-items, but the alums from 1980 would be the first to bitch when mailbox size limits were imposed.
No, thank you. I'll stick with Hotmail. I'm screwing M$ out of server resources that way.
Zaphod B
Re:Great,your alma mater can spam you for donation (Score:1)
uhhh (Score:1)
Re:a bad idea (Score:2)
Re:What other account? (Score:1)
old news (Score:1)
that's it?! (Score:5)
Least they could do was give you a shell account or dialup....
What other account? (Score:4)
I personaly would trust my school with my mail much more than the other three any way
Straight from the press release (Score:1)
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Re:what about alumnae.*.edu ?? (Score:2)
Just because it is accepted that the masculine gender takes precedence over the feminine in a mixed group doesn't make it right--see the numorous essays in which "she" is arbitrarily being substituted for "he" where a non-gender-specific pronoun is needed.
And fuck you, that was not a troll.
Heh... (Score:1)
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
Double-bad idea. (Score:1)
Never, never, never reply to a spammer. Replying to a spammer is the best way a spammer has to verify that your address is fresh, and there's a live body on the end of the email address. Frankly, I'm surprised you don't receive much more spam.
Once spammers have proven your address to be live, your email address is much more valuable, and you can expect spam for years to come. My old email address from 10+ years ago (which was unactivated for 7 years) still recieves weekly spam.
The only way I've been able to make a dent in the amount of spam that I recieve, is through SpamCop [spamcop.net]. Some may disagree with its tactics or methods, but it does much of the drudgework of parsing forged headers and complaining to the proper authorities for me quickly and easily. Plus there are free and for-pay versions. Worth a look-see.
What! (Score:1)
God does not play dice with the universe. Albert Einstein
Why bother with address? I want the account, pls! (Score:2)
ALL [ save for class mailing lists ] of my mail gets forwarded to that school account via Yahoo forwarding or, lately, via my own domain.
Therefore, the only thing i'd want from my grad school is to let me keep that UNIX account, but they would most assuredly fail to do so - CS department will cancel the account when I leave.
Now, the upsides of having them forward to <myname>@alum.<myschool>.edu would be:
Downsides:
All in all, unless you're in MIT or a fanatic of your institution for life, I see no reason to bother with one.
If they, on the other hand, offered a long-term (not even permanent) UNIX-based mail account, i'd even agree to pay some monthly/yearly fee for it. Probably on a separate server if enough people sign up, so it doesn't take CPU/memory resources from real students.
<Dennis Miller>But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.</Dennis Miller>
-DVK
this is why most people use hotmail (Score:1)
a good many of them have gotten accounts on my server and are using some webmail scripts that i'm using instead of hotmail however. kinda a cool feeling, to be replacing hotmail :)
so hey, all us geeks with our own mail servers, should offer our friends and family mail accounts that they can use for life.
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good experience with university email for life (Score:1)
I have had only one case of the university using it for any purpose. They let me know that I would be receiving a snail mail application for an affiliated credit card. Its much better than changing your email address with scores of contacts every time you need to switch ISPs.
Re:Great,your alma mater can spam you for donation (Score:1)
Great,your alma mater can spam you for donations (Score:3)
a bad idea (Score:3)
Oh, that's right, science will save us with the development of a magic spam filter that is 100% efficient.
The advantage of these... (Score:1)
Another advantage is that it makes it easy to remember how to reach some of my friends.
Also, in four years i've had no spam on the account, school-related or otherwise, that I'm not directly responsible for. Kind of surprising, really, when you consider how aggresive the school is at exploiting other methods of begging for cash.
At Bowdoin (Score:1)
Nothing new... (Score:1)
In my experience University email systems aren't the most reliable in the world though
Re:At Stanford... (Score:2)
Most students don't seem to feel drawn to keeping in touch with their alma mater. Many do, of course, but it still appears that the majority get out, get a job, get a life, and don't look back -- and as we had a history of high levels of state funding until recently, there was no tradition of post-graduation donation to act as a spur. We'd like to offer it, but we need to do some cultural re-education first.
///Peter
Re:a bad idea (Score:1)
I wish my capus IT department did that. Then again, I even heard a rumor that my University sold their email list to some spammers. The sad thing is that I really wouldn't put it past the money hungry sob's to do something like that.
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the choice (Score:1)
Re:that's it?! (Score:1)
Done here too (Score:2)
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Re:Government supplied e-mail account in Finland (Score:2)
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No perhaps about it (Score:1)
Perhaps? PERHAPS? What would you like to bet that this is the principle reason? My old school pesters me half to death and they flunked me out. If they had my email address, they'd probably be twice as obnoxious.
Re:what about spam? (Score:1)
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C'mon, flame me!
Re:a bad idea (Score:1)
Re:Great,your alma mater can spam you for donation (Score:2)
Re:what about alumnae.*.edu ?? (Score:2)
Who wants another account? (Score:1)
I suppose it makes it easier for them to contact you ever 10 years though, so make sure you run that account to be checked every minute (like I do at work...)
what about spam? (Score:1)
After a couple years, this email addie would be so laden with spam, that people would quit checking it, and move on.
Re:that's it?! (Score:1)
Just ask the grammar nazi.
Re:University of Virginia (Score:1)
Also, I can't recall a single e-mail I've gotten from the University for fund-raising, etc on this account. That could be because it's run by the alumni association and not by the University proper. I am curious, though. I don't see a single post (in my admittedly hasting browsing) that says anyone has actually received a U-spam from their institution... just bitterly cynical people who assume it will happen. Has anyone actually *had* a problem with this?
Companies should not auto-forward for ex-employees (Score:1)
careful what you ask for (Score:1)
They don't appear to be giving it out to anyone (after about 5 years), but darned if every spammer on the planet doesn't have it anyway.
Re:spam magnet (Score:1)
It really wouldn't surprise me if schools have extended this practice to alumni. Especially given the fact alumni tend to have more money that college students, are and therefore more valuable to the marketers.
Re:Really, this should be a *duh* (Score:1)
I remember the old days when... (Score:2)
Never mind the obvious, that it'd be illegal to sell university bandwidth, as a stdent there, you could pay your way through school selling addresses.
But in all seriousness, it's nise to see that there's yet another opportunity for pretentiousness and college snobbery made possible through the wonders if the internet
--CTH
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I wonder... (Score:1)
Great (Score:2)
But then again I would like them to throw in the Alpha Sorority.
Are you on the Sfglj [sfgoth.com] (SF-Goth EMail Junkies List) ?
Re:I remember the old days when... (Score:1)
"Tiny resume" better w/ professional organization? (Score:1)
The "well-known" part is key, if the school is not well-known then there's probably not much value, and if it is your email address could backfire. For example, a Harvard alum email address would be well-known, but could come across as arrogant. On the other hand, if I gave out a name@alum.purdue.edu email address, would someone think "Guess he couldn't get into MIT" or "Purdue didn't admit me, I hate this guy"? This is why I prefer affiliating with a professional organization, and use my IEEE [ieee.org] email address.
SPAM from the whois db (Score:1)
The really interesting thing is that these addresses NEVER get used in spam. I wouldn't expect Amazon or any other big company to do it (since there'd be a huge backlash from /.ers et al), but even the shadier sites haven't used the addresses I gave them either.
The spam I do get is usually caught by my spam filter (doesn't contain @mydomain.com or @my.edu or mylastname in the to: or cc: headers). This spam generally references (in the addressing headers but not in the to: or cc:) my .edu account or the generic catchall address at my domain (I used to use it for usenet postings). The address in the whois db under which I registered my domain gets a ton of spam. It is a hotmail account, but it didn't get spammed for about 2 years after I created it; all of a sudden I get 10-15 per day. Disheartening, but I never used the account for anything other than .com registration, so I have no idea why they started spamming of late.
"Take Your Diploma and Get the Hell Out" (Score:1)
"E-mail accounts are for CURRENT paying customers. As a graduate, you are a FORMER paying customer. Goodbye."
The poor hardworking people doing fundraising at Phonathon can't even use e-mail accounts as an answer the question in potential givers' minds:
"Before I pay out my hard-earned cash, what has St. Olaf done for me _lately_? I can at least get a lousy e-mail account, right?"
Apparently not..
That and.. (Score:1)
WHat about SPAM? (Score:1)
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don't get IEEE addresses (Score:3)
I would recommend against using those E-mail addresses: they are tied to continued membership in those organizations, and you may at some point decide to leave them. After all, membership is expensive, benefits are minimal, and the organizations may take political positions that you disagree with.
The IEEE was particularly bad: when I renewed late one year, they immediately reassigned my E-mail address to someone else and didn't give it back. Any well-run organization should at least have a non-trivial exclusionary period during which an address can't be reassigned; anything else is a security problem. I also found IEEE customer support in general pretty slow and unsatisfactory, and the E-mail forwarding was unreliable anyway when I first got it (maybe they have fixed it by now).