A few more options for email communication.

(1) Sign-up for an outside, web-based free service. Encourage your colleagues to do the same. There are many available – Yahoo e-mail, Hotmail and perhaps the best option (in terms of storage space) is Google’s upcoming G-Mail email service. If you limit critical communications to others to only web-based, outside email services, then there is not much the university can do to snoop on your emails.

(2) Caveat for the above:

(a) The university can ‘scrape’ the internet feed in a variety of ways to record all un-encrypted data transfers – this means that the itech folks, (or pileum) could theoretically record all unencrypted data traffic on campus and then search through this data to find email messages, etc., using a variety of different method. The extent of the above occurrence would depend greatly on the technical prowess, resolve, resources and manpower of the university administration – unlikely, but it could be done.

(b) Use the encryption tools as suggested by the previous post. There are many available – see the below Google directory listing of PGP (encryption tools) – some are free, others are commercial. It’s a good option, but incorporating encryption and decrypting, as well as gathering and distributing keys can be non-trivial at first. Encryption can become second nature, however, with enough use, so do not become discouraged with the learning curve – as your environment changes around you, you must adapt in order to survive, right?


http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Security/Products_and_Tools/Cryptography/PGP/Software/


In reference to the hassles of distributing your public PGP key for others to use to de-crypt your emails, MIT has established a public key ‘clearinghouse’ - any individual may use this website to freely distribute their public key by submission of the key to the database. Users who need your key simply visit the site and perform a search for your name.


http://pgpkeys.mit.edu:11371/


For more information on PGP, PGP FAQs, PGP sites on the web, where to get it and how to implement it, please visit the MIT PGP website:


http://web.mit.edu/network/pgp.html