Hide Staff emails from students with exchange 2003

[bilbo]

We are having a problem with students sending obscene emails to staff, so

I've been asked to hide staff emails from the students, we are using exchange 2003. The Staff use outlook and the students access thier emails via owa.

Or is there a way to restrict groups sending to other groups.

Thanks in advance.

[Edu-IT]

I've been asked to hide staff emails from the students,

Do all of the email addresses have the same format?

[WithoutMotive]

If anyone knows how to do this, it would be an advantage to me, too. All I can think of is creating a separate staff address book and hide their addresses from the Global Address List... again, if people know how to do that, too, it would be helpful.

[Edu-IT]

If anyone knows how to do this, it would be an advantage to me, too. All I can think of is creating a separate staff address book and hide their addresses from the Global Address List... again, if people know how to do that, too, it would be helpful.

Wouldn't pupils still be able to guess staff email addresses though or am I missing something?

[banjoman]

yes the emails have the same format. And yes your quite correct some of our brighter pupils would guess, but try explaining this to the leadership team.

[Edu-IT]

yes the emails have the same format. And yes your quite correct some of our brighter pupils would guess, but try explaining this to the leadership team.

Why can't you just disable the students email access? (Are you bilbo?)

[mrcrazy04]

Failing that - ban the kids who send the obscene emails. I'm sure they'd start to learn!

[plock]

If any issue like this arises, I use sending limits to restrict students sending any emails. This allows staff to email them coursework deadlines and so forth.

[SYNACK]

There is an option in active directory under the user accounts (if you have the exchange admin tools installed) that hides the user from the global address list.

 

You should be able to change the lot by selecting all of the staff at once, assuming they are in one OU and opening up properties. This will then apply any settings that you change to all of the selected users at once.

[plock]

I have used this for External Contacts that we don't wish our students to view.

 

However, this is useless as our standard format of [email protected] is for students and staff. Our lovely students would soon realise they can type the email address in.

[strawberry]

yes the emails have the same format. And yes your quite correct some of our brighter pupils would guess, but try explaining this to the leadership team.

 

maybe the school should ban pens as well incase the students write obscene notes to the teachers!.

[CyberNerd]

We Filter the email, any obscene words are sent to system admins. Offenders are dealt with appropriately and the rest of the school can continue to use the system.

[banjoman]

How do you filter emails that sounds good, the only problem is that Students will just say that someone else logged on as them. I'm all for punishnment, by retracting pc privilages, but how can you protect the innocent.

[Andrew_C]

the only problem is that Students will just say that someone else logged on as them.

Either they did it, or they shared their password. Either way they get a (metaphorical, unfortunately sometimes) kicking.

[SYNACK]

There is no sending restriction features avalible in Exchange that will allow you to limit where they send to. You would need to use an extra piece of software. At our school we use Surfcontrol Email Filter. It can be a bit temperamental at times but it is very efficient at handling spam both inside and outside the organization.

[strawberry]

How do you filter emails that sounds good, the only problem is that Students will just say that someone else logged on as them. I'm all for punishnment, by retracting pc privilages, but how can you protect the innocent.

 

best suggestion is to add that they are ultimately responsible for their own accounts into the user agreement.

 

is very disappointing taht your management team want to try to hide the problem rather than deal with it.

[fooby]

Seriously its easy

 

1. Print email

2. Send to head teacher / head of year

3. Keep students in : lunch /break / after school

4. disable email access

5. send letter to parents.

 

Just like any other incident of bullying / stupidity there will be a process to punish the student.

 

We dont have the students here sending messages to staff that are silly - usually work and questions.

 

the first student that sent an abusive message to a staff member was made an example of (kept in for weeks, letters home etc)

 

None of which you will have to deal with as a techie, just provide the evidence for the teacher to present to parents / head.

[zag]

Agree with everyone else, its the students responsibility to keep their account secure. If an email came from them, its their problem and they should be punished accordingly.

[TheCrust]

There is no sending restriction features avalible in Exchange that will allow you to limit where they send to.

 

 

Yeah there are in 2003. Kind of.

 

This is assuming you have the Exchange tools installed on the same PC you are accessing ADU&C from:

 

1. Start ADU&C, view the properties of a user (for arguments sake, your headteacher)

2. Click the "Exchange General" tab

3. Click "Delivery Restrictions"

4. The bottom half of the window that appears is what you want. You can set Exchange to accept messages from authenticated users only, everyone, only from, or from everyone except.

4. Choose "from everyone except" and just add in your student users group to the box.

5. Job jobbed.

 

 

This doesn't hide their email from the GAL, but it stops students sending email to that member of staff.

 

Of course, not necessarily appropriate if students are expected to return coursework via email or are encouraged to email their form tutor under anti-bullying policy (for example). But it works well enough.

 

 

In terms of hiding address lists, we seperate student / staff email lists by leaving the "Firstname" and "lastname" attributes for each student user blank - only populating their display name in AD. Staff user accounts are fully populated as you'd expect anywhere else.

 

Membership of the relevent address list is based on if lastname / firstname is blank or not. If blank, is student (so go in student AL). If not, is staff (so go in staff AL).

 

 

In tandem with the exchange sending restrictions that works for us quite well, but doesn't stop those intent on doing something stupid and intelligent enough to work out how.

 

As has been said by Fooby and Andrew_C though - usually just removing internet / network rights for a nominated period of time and providing the evidence to the SLT does wonders, and if they plead innocence they are more likely of being guilty of sharing logons with another student somewhere along the line so they don't escape the consequences.

[mb2k01]

This is a very old post, so it might not be of any interest any longer, but...

 

A previous post about hiding addressed from the Global Address List will work, but if you have to do that for every member of staff it will 1) Take ages and 2) Stop staff from being able to pick up eachother!

 

A better solution would be to sit at the Exchange Server, open System Manager and create two seperate mail storage groups - 1 for staff and 1 for students.

On the properties of each group you will be able to specify which address list they can pick up.

 

(Of course, if you only have the one "default address list" which contains everybody, you will have to make two for students and staff to be able to assign them, but with good AD management (or a quick session on ADModify) and some filtering rules it is fairly easy to do)