Students wishing to impersonate online John Kerry, Homer Simpson or the Absolute Quiet Room will have a harder time doing so this year because of a change in policy by Computing and Information Services. As of Sept. 1, students are required to go to the CIS Help Desk and register their alternate e-mail addresses in person, after receiving approval for their choices.
The policy regarding alternate e-mail addresses changed after a student created an e-mail account as President_Simmons@brown.edu last spring. CIS decided the current policy was too permissive, according to Director of Personal Technology Services Kara Kelley.
Prior to the change, students could set up alternate e-mail addresses from their myAccount page. Any new address was checked against a "bad words list," which included words that were offensive or obviously someone else's identity, Kelley said. The address was then sent to CIS' identity management system to make sure no one else was currently holding that address.
If the e-mail address did not meet these criteria, an e-mail was sent to the student asking him or her to explain the address, and if the explanation was not sufficient or if the student didn't respond, the address was deleted from the student's account, Kelley said.
But there were occasional glitches in the system. "If an e-mail address was registered on Friday and then on Monday there was a lot of other work or people were too busy to read the report, sometimes we wouldn't find out about an inappropriate address until several days after it was registered," Kelley said.
She said this was the case with the e-mail address President_Simmons@brown.edu, and CIS decided that the policy needed to be changed.
"Our issue is that people can spoof e-mails, but if you can send an e-mail to President_Simmons@brown.edu, there is almost an implicit understanding that the University is acknowledging it," Kelley said.
While many alternate e-mail addresses have been used to create false profiles on such sites as TheFacebook.com, Kelley said that was not considered in making the decision to change the policy. "We're more worried about someone taking a false identity and broadcasting it, and the appearance that the University has approved of it," she said.
The alternate e-mail service is provided for students to register addresses that may be a preferred name or nickname, Kelley said. But she said the system is not always foolproof. If, for example, someone's initials appear to be someone else's name or an offensive word, the address most likely wouldn't be approved unless the student could show its significance.
So far, the CIS Help Desk has only registered six alternate e-mail addresses under the new policy, which seems to be a decrease from years past.
"There are some alternate e-mails that people would be hesitant to ask for in person but don't have a problem with when it's anonymous," Kelley said.
Herald senior staff writer Stephanie Clark '07 can be reached at herald@browndailyherald.com.
