Email Technical Policy

All efforts will be made to ensure the best possible email delivery environment for the entire campus. All incoming and outgoing electronic mail must pass through gateways authorized by Information Technology (IT). 

At these gateways, the mail will be scanned for viruses and tagged for possible unsolicited commercial email, also known as spam. Knowingly sending virus-laden email, spam messages, or annoying or obscene email from University accounts is prohibited.

 If sending of large quantities of mail for professional functions is necessary, the Information Security office, security@mst.edu, should be contacted prior to sending, to avoid the potential for automatically blocking the message.

Due to the adoption of blacklists which identify senders of Unsolicited Commercial Email or spam and block all email from those sources, it is necessary to make sure that all mail goes through authorized pathways. This prevents rogue programs from sending out unsolicited email (spam) directly to the Internet.

Without such a policy, the University runs the risk of having the entire .mst.edu domain of email addresses placed on an email blacklist. This would prevent email from flowing to sites that utilize the particular email blacklist. Removal of an entry from a blacklist is very difficult.

The University has been blacklisted in the past and suffered failed mail delivery to major Internet Service Providers for several days before the problem could be rectified.

The use of virus or Trojan scanning programs on the authorized mail gateways can prevent the spread of virus or Trojan-laden email. Such scanners provide additional security to the campus network. All mail that is found to match a known virus signature will be blocked and not delivered. Such mail can only be retrieved with the aid of IT.

The use of spam reduction programs on the authorized mail gateways can minimize the amount of spam that email customers on the campus would otherwise have to spend time processing. IT reserves the right to classify all incoming mail for the probability of spam as well as the segregation of such mail.

All mail marked as SPAM will be sent to your Junk Email folder. Be careful as some of that email could easily be Phishing email.

This means that the mail infrastructure will make a best effort to deliver all non-harmful mail (including spam) to its intended recipient. It is up to individual customers to change this mail flow by opting-in to mail quarantining or spam filtering software. Virus-laden email is considered harmful and will never be knowingly admitted into the campus email environment.

Misuse of university computing facilities will be dealt with on a case by case basis. The users subject to charges of misuse will be dealt with in a manner consistent with the laws of the state of Missouri, the policies of the University of Missouri and the Bylaws of the Missouri S&T General Faculty.

The Information Security Officer is responsible for making these misuses known to the appropriate University administrators.

The Information Security Officer may impose temporary restrictions on the offender's computer access in order to ensure that the network remains stable and secure for all University users.