Xref: utzoo comp.admin.policy:411 comp.unix.admin:2197 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!sdd.hp.com!think.com!mintaka!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!sics.se!fuug!mcsun!ukc!icdoc!sot-ecs!tjc From: tjc@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Tim Chown) Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy,comp.unix.admin Subject: Re: E-mail Privacy Message-ID: <8114@ecs.soton.ac.uk> Date: 11 Jun 91 22:24:59 GMT References: <50318@muvms3.bitnet> <3651@happym.WA.COM> Organization: University of Southampton, UK Lines: 27 In <3651@happym.WA.COM> josh@happym.WA.COM (Joshua_Putnam) writes: >Absent an ironclad guarantee of privacy, I have no right to assume any >files on the company's computer are absolutely inviolable. If regular >backups are made and kept, I have no reason to believe they will not >be used. Even if the company provides nominally private personal >directories to employees, employees should remember that their files >may be viewed accidentally by administrators (who should keep quiet >about what they see in such cases). Sometimes the mail system, sendmail in our case, fails due to an error of some sort. It's quite rare but as our postmaster I redirect failed headers to me so I can attempt to prevent similar failures and notify senders/intended recipients of the problem and perhaps the cause. Anyway, as a result I saw a message between two students that was clearly showing them to be cheating in an assigment by exchanging pieces of code. I only saw the subject line, but it was enough. Do you turn a blind eye? Do you let the offenders gain an unfair advantage? It's not at all clear cut. We have correlation software written as the basis as a PhD that checks for collaboration on the structure of code, but when you have the extra "proof" should you root (literally ;-) around further? Tricky. Tim --