Office of Student Aid : Parents of Students : Parent Newsletter

Penn State Office of Student Aid Parent Newsletter

February 2008

Your Student @psu.edu

A Penn State Access Account enables a student to use internet services, student computing labs, and a Penn State e-mail account. Typically, students set up their accounts when they attend the First-year Testing, Counseling, and Advising Program (FTCAP). Once the account is activated, students can access their Penn State e-mail account via WebMail, a web-based interface. Instructors, advisers, and administrative offices will use this means to convey electronic notices to your student. It is extremely important that your student monitor his or her Penn State e-mail account regularly for notifications regarding official Penn State business.

Although students can choose to forward their Penn State e-mail to a commercial account, several caveats are in order.

• As the volume of spam (unsolicited commercial e-mail) has increased, commercial account providers have developed spam filters and bulk or junk mail folders. Penn State and Department of Education electronic notifications are sometimes flagged as unsolicited mail and diverted from an in-box to one of these junk or bulk mail folders. Depending on the service provider and your student's personal settings, important e-mail can be diverted from the in-box, and critical notifications can be lost or missed.
• Students should monitor the amount of e-mail they retain in their accounts. Most e-mail providers limit the amount of available storage space. If a student has reached that limit, new messages will not be delivered.

Although Penn State and commercial account providers have developed filters to help combat the influx of unwanted messages, spam can still cause problems depending on an individual's e-mail account settings. Sometimes, the volume of spam is such that it is hard to sort through the messages to find the important ones. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) suggests that individuals may want to maintain separate e-mail accounts--a "disposable" one for use in public forums where the possibility exists for address "harvesting" and a private e-mail address (xyz123@psu.edu) for personal correspondence. As students browse the internet, enter contests, chat, and complete surveys, their e-mail address has the potential to be captured and used by or sold to spammers. You could ask your student to keep an eye on privacy policies when submitting his or her e-mail address on Web sites. Often, there is a preselected check box that authorizes the company to share e-mail addresses with their "partners." By using a disposable address for such transactions, students can help protect their Penn State account from potential floods of unwanted mail or at least slow the tide.