internal spamming of exchange

[goodhead]

we run exchange. The kids have to have email accounts for some reason.

All they use it for is spamming each other. some times bullying.

 

Is there any way that we can stop them from emailing each other internally?

 

All they need is to send and recieve external emails.

 

we run exchg 2000

[timbo343]

i dont know of one, but you could always say to the kids that if any form of spamming or bullying is going on then we will remove your email account from you!!!

Just out of interest, and totally off the point, how much space do you give kids and staff for their mailboxes?

[goodhead]

i dont know of one, but you could always say to the kids that if any form of spamming or bullying is going on then we will remove your email account from you!!!

Just out of interest, and totally off the point, how much space do you give kids and staff for their mailboxes?

 

we dont set a limit. we monitor the space being used. We never get an issue with space.

 

we cant monitor every email that they send to each other.

[Busybub]

In the property sheet of the user account there is an Exchange tab that gives you another option called delivery restrictions.

 

You can specify "From everybody except"...

 

Problem is that you would be there for ages putting in the relevant entries.

 

If somebody knows a better way, I'm all ears as I have a similar problem.

 

*grrrrrr*

[Busybub]

we cant monitor every email that they send to each other.

 

I've been thinking that this might be the way to go, if somebody knows of such a solution???

[timbo343]

oh ok, its just that we have got our mailboxes for staff.. kids dont have an email account, they use hotmail, but anyway, we have the sizes set to 15 mb and see how it goes from there. Its a lot easier to manage too, as its upto the user to delete emails and keep the storage down to a minimum.

But going back to your original question... i dont know... Even if you did try to remove sending mail internally, you will still get kids probably sending the email so it goes outside then back in. IF you see what i mean.

[goodhead]

oh ok, its just that we have got our mailboxes for staff.. kids dont have an email account, they use hotmail, but anyway, we have the sizes set to 15 mb and see how it goes from there. Its a lot easier to manage too, as its upto the user to delete emails and keep the storage down to a minimum.

But going back to your original question... i dont know... Even if you did try to remove sending mail internally, you will still get kids probably sending the email so it goes outside then back in. IF you see what i mean.

 

your right, hadn't thought of that.

 

What can happen is, a kid gets nasty email from a another kid. he then tells he parents. the parents complain to the school.

Then falls on us to sort it out. In this case there maybe no good solution. That doesn't go well with the parent of the bullied kid.

[timbo343]

well then, there are 2 options i think,

1.remove the email address of the bully and disable them from the network.

2. remove all kids email addresses, and then get them to use hotmail. Thats what we do and then its upto the kids to sort them selves out and if any bullying does go on then the parents can sort it out between them, as they are using an external source. Again, its down to the teacher to be monitoring what the kids are looking/typing on hotmail, i know of a few occasions where i have looked what kids are doing via lan view and some of the messages they send to each other... and sometimes you have trouble reading it as it is in text language (now i sound like a grump.)

Also am supprised that the kids havent been emailing the teachers, that is what ours would do. We had a situation where a teacher let out his email to kids and they had a field day with threats but that was from a hotmail address, so a letter went home to the likey candidates.

[CyberNerd]

We use Zimbra which filters spam for internal and external mail, we set up a word blacklist that prevents bullying by identifying keywords. The filter blocks the bad mail from being sent and sends it directly to administrators who informs head of year -usually resulting from a temporary account suspension.

[Gatt]

We run exchange 2003 for internal use only for the kids, but get the same problems

We have full mailbox journalling on so we can see every email that they send. but still they send crap - and 99% of it is in that bloody TXT speak :twisted: which makes it almost impossible to understand whats being said without an interpreter..

 

Again the problems arrise when we get a pupil who is spamming or bullying through the system

 

The only 2 solutions we have are:

 

Disable their Mailbox (ie delete there email address)

or

Disable the email system for everyone

 

I'm very keen to try and find a sort of "Sin Bin" add-on that we can use to temporarily disable their email without deleting them.

[adent]

Filtering email for exchange would require software that examined the users mailboxes directly. Of course, if you have external filtering in place, and all you have to worry about is abuse internally, how about putting in place something like Policy Central from Forensic Software? It would cost about the same as internal mail filtering anyhow.

 

It sits on the graphics card and takes screen captures. That way you get the proof and it monitors the whole screen, not just email.

 

It's only as good as the behaviour policy and how it is enforced of course, but it places the descision back where it belongs, with the teachers.

 

Forensic Software

[tscnmuk]

We run exchange 2003 for internal use only for the kids, but get the same problems

We have full mailbox journalling on so we can see every email that they send. but still they send crap - and 99% of it is in that bloody TXT speak :twisted: which makes it almost impossible to understand whats being said without an interpreter..

 

Again the problems arrise when we get a pupil who is spamming or bullying through the system

 

The only 2 solutions we have are:

 

Disable their Mailbox (ie delete there email address)

or

Disable the email system for everyone

 

I'm very keen to try and find a sort of "Sin Bin" add-on that we can use to temporarily disable their email without deleting them.

 

A type of "Sin Bin" system that we have used is to remove the ""self" rights on the user's mailbox. Go into the User using Active Directory on the Exchange Server itself. On the "Exchange Advanced" tab under mailbox rights, is a "self" option. If you just set that to deny all, the kid won't be able to access the mailbox at all, let alone send anymore messages.

[tscnmuk]

As an add-on thought to my previous statement. When removing a students rights from their mailbox, I always found it benifical to change the user description to something that would alert me to the fact that it had been done. Lots of times scratching head why a user couldn't access their mailbox.

[john]

2. remove all kids email addresses, and then get them to use hotmail. Thats what we do and then its upto the kids to sort them selves out and if any bullying does go on then the parents can sort it out between them, as they are using an external source.

 

Sort of OT here, but I see your from North Yorks, do you use the new Bull ISP? If so your plan here will fall flat on its face in a month's time when access to Hotmail, Yahoo, Orange and other free webmail providers is blocked off for your own protection and safety.

[timbo343]

2. remove all kids email addresses, and then get them to use hotmail. Thats what we do and then its upto the kids to sort them selves out and if any bullying does go on then the parents can sort it out between them, as they are using an external source.

 

Sort of OT here, but I see your from North Yorks, do you use the new Bull ISP? If so your plan here will fall flat on its face in a month's time when access to Hotmail, Yahoo, Orange and other free webmail providers is blocked off for your own protection and safety.

 

Nah we are not on the LEA ISP, bull, we can do our own filtering and stable internet for half the price of what county charge, and set our own filter policies up so kids can hardly access anything....

[alonebfg]

just a quick one on bulling and hotmail and this is law and why we now block hotmail. we log everything via swgfl and a while ago a friend of mine daughter was getting bullyed at school. emails via hotmail. and police were involved. after checking headers ect ect of the email it was found that the email was sent during school time and from the school ip ( its then schools problem) it had to be investagated by the school as the hotmail addy in question was created in the school for the purpus of bullying. schools bulling policy met that it was liable. since this issue the school no longer allows hotmail yahoo or other webbased mail and has put them all back on block and students do have internal email and external email. as each email is lined to a student if and sent from in school it can be traced back to the student in question. tyhey can recive emails externaly but the are filtered. bulling just because its not using you system its still school proplem if sent during school time. (by the way i was suprised myself with the content on some of the emails that said student had recived ie i am going to fing and geffing kill you) i know this is extream but kids do it.

[adent]

IMHO there is no way of effectively blocking bullying email using spam filters. They are too prone to false positives and errors. It's not just the yahoo, hotmail or gmail accounts. A lot of ISP's nowadays allow webmail accounts to be set up on the fly so just blocking hotmail, yahoo etc is a waste of energy (ok you stop those sites, but what about the rest?).

 

If you are going to be liable, as the case illustrated in previous posts, then you need to be sure you have solid audits, because prevention is a bit like willing the tide back out.

 

Yes you need to filter where possible, to stop the obvious stuff, but you also need to audit to catch the not so obvious. That means you, or the ISP have to be able to trace it back to an individual on a single machine.

 

Having something like Forensic or School Guardian is a big help.

 

We had an incident at one of our schools last summer. We got a phone call from an upset software manufacturer saying that someone from the school had sent in abusive text using an enquiry form on their site. They had traced it back to our firewall IP.

 

The network manager was able to look through the filter logs filtering on the web site, identify the PC, and within 10 minutes of the phone call a shocked young lad was before the deputy head with a copy of the screen shot. He admitted doing it. His shock was in getting caught! - needless to say spam is not a problem in that school.

[Busybub]

We run exchange 2003 for internal use only for the kids, but get the same problems

We have full mailbox journalling on so we can see every email that they send. but still they send crap - and 99% of it is in that bloody TXT speak :twisted: which makes it almost impossible to understand whats being said without an interpreter..

 

Again the problems arrise when we get a pupil who is spamming or bullying through the system

 

The only 2 solutions we have are:

 

Disable their Mailbox (ie delete there email address)

or

Disable the email system for everyone

 

I'm very keen to try and find a sort of "Sin Bin" add-on that we can use to temporarily disable their email without deleting them.

 

I use an additional group policy which has outlook.exe disabled. I just add the users or groups to the permissions of that policy.

 

Can you give any more details on this full mailbox journaling? Sounds interesting...

[tarquel]

Have some of this:

 

http://msexchange.org/tutorials/Implementing-Exchange-2003-Message-Journaling.html

 

Very easy to do, but dont forget to use some sort of amount of days restriction or your space is going to get used up very quickly lol

 

I think I have it on 60 days [not that i ever look at it - I've got it enbled as a aftermath tool, as I'm sure reading other peoples emails without some legit reason i.e. abuse/misuse, etc., is illegal etc]

 

The Head of ICT decided to remove all the pupil email accounts due to some misuse taking place [minus the 6th form], but if there was a way to prevent internal sending of emails for a specific user group then that would mean they could have them again for a legitimate reason :)

 

Regards

Nath

[Gatt]

This is my thoughts tarquel, Although we can shut down all the Exchange services, its a bind and screws up any Intranet-based emial systems.

 

Disabling the SELF user rights is a bind since it needs to be done on a per user basis , but at least it still keeps everyone else working.

 

TBH, it doesn't surprise me that M$ left such a useful facility out!

[srochford]

Disabling the SELF user rights is a bind since it needs to be done on a per user basis , but at least it still keeps everyone else working.

Remember, that any repetitve task is almost certainly better done with scripting - there's an O'Reilly book called the Exchange Cookbook which is full of examples.

TBH, it doesn't surprise me that M$ left such a useful facility out!

I have to say that I am very surprised that anyone would imagine that a facility to stop users receiving email in an email system is a useful feature!! email systems send and receive email; turning that off on a global scale basically means it's no longer an email system!

 

As others have said, it's not really a technology problem. Kids have always bullied each other and no doubt always will. The fact that they now use text messages and emails instead of scrawled messages or whispering doesn't really change things. If anything, email makes it easier to deal with bullying. If I scribble "you die" and put it in someone's locker you can't really identify me. If I send an email (particularly from a controlled school system) then you know who it's from and can more easily deal with it.