Gmail and TCD

Thirdfox

Hey guys,

I just got an e-mail about this:

http://www.tcd.ie/Communications/news.php?headerID=551&vs_date=2007-3-1

so when do we switch over? Do the older students migrate to gmail or only the new students?

Anyone have any more info about this?

Thanks

John

Nice to see the Hego cardboard cut-out getting another airing!

Sounds like a good plan, especially considering every college webmail system is a load of poo and gmail is brilliant.

ApeXaviour

John wrote:

Nice to see the Hego cardboard cut-out getting another airing!

lmao!

That's scary... He's not even looking at the camera.

Danger Bob

As of yesterday, I have loads of info on this so I might as well answer some questions.

The first phase of the changeover is set to start in April. At this point, students will have the option to opt-in and change their mymail account to a Gmail account.

Next year's first years will automatically get Gmail accounts when they register. They won't have any option to have a mymail system.

Then, in December, any student who hasn't transferred yet will have their accounts transferred automatically and ISS will delete mymail off its servers.

The e-mail for life plan is still to be 100% finalised but it's set that if final year students this year opt-in before the end of this year, they will then have TCD e-mail for life. As will all other students currently registered in the college.

xebec

Danger Bob wrote:

The e-mail for life plan is still to be 100% finalised but it's set that if final year students this year opt-in before the end of this year, they will then have TCD e-mail for life. As will all other students currently registered in the college.

That's the bit that I wanted to hear

Crash

Hehehe, this is great for us, but prepare for the new first years in a couple of years to be

maguirb11275@tcd.ie

and so on

sully-gormo

If you already have a gmail account, can you merge the two

Ling

sully-gormo wrote:

If you already have a gmail account, can you merge the two

How? I've tried by following the directions on gmail but it doesn't seem to work

ApeXaviour

sully-gormo wrote:

If you already have a gmail account, can you merge the two

That's what I was wondering... And if so which address will take precedence?

Ling

sully-gormo wrote:

If you already have a gmail account, can you merge the two

Turns out that it does work afterall... If you already have a gmail account then that will take precedence. Under settings you have the option of adding another email account (i.e mymail) to your gmail one. There was a problem with POP3 downloads but google must have fixed it. Gmail will also allow you to send emails using your mymail address.

Edwardius

Hmmm, I have all me stuff forwarded to gmail anyway. Spam filters and all. Wonder if I'll have two now cos I use the same username for the TCD and gmail one.

Pet

I wanted to open a gmail account with my TCD username, but it was one character short.. this is good news, as long as I don't get a load of bloody numbers that is..

John

roro111!!!!@gmail.tcd.ie.com

Moorsy

Does it worry anybody here that our e-mail service is being outsourced to Google?


What does Google get out of the deal? They get to show you ads, for one thing that are related to the content of your messages. Google “reads” your e-mail and shows you text ads that it deems relevant. This is very bothersome to some people. Furthermore, Google’s Terms of Service suggest that when you delete an e-mail through the Web interface, it may not be deleted from the Google storage system. Some people are pretty unhappy about this, too.

And since Google is a massive search engine used by almost everyone, the fear is that providing e-mail services as well could give the company access to too much information in one place. For instance, Google could technically have the ability to correlate Web searches with e-mail content, which might serve to “profile” an individual’s interests.

I do see the advantages to Gmail. All e-mail exchanges are kept together as “conversations” and “labels” can be applied to e-mails to easily organize them. Moreover, Google is providing a massive amount of storage on its Gmail accounts, now more than 2 GB per account, and that figure increases fractionally on a minute-by minute basis.


But my real question is why is trinity giving away it present e-mail system? I don't have any problems with it but I would have a problem with Trinity selling our e-mails to Google so marketers can better target us. Does anybody else fear Google keeping logs of your e-mails for years?...

Crash

As far as I know, google tcd mail will be different to gmail - I raised this issue as well, because if gmail were to be used specifically, google would surely be violating some of trinitys own rules in relation to ISS and information etc.

I was told that ISS had problems with it too and any email services would be subject to ISS having a say on privacy issues.

For instance, mail sent by certain college departments can be considered confidential and logging of that wby google would be contra to college's ideas on privacy.

think I'm gonna have a look into it further and decide myself as to whether to switch - might stick to mymail for as long as possible if there are some questions, and try to get stuff sorted out.

xebec

Just to start, I'm not involved in this process and what I post here are my opinions or what I believe to be true - I may be wrong :eek:

Moorsy wrote:

Does it worry anybody here that our e-mail service is being outsourced to Google?

Not me personally, but I'm sure it'll bother some.

Moorsy wrote:

What does Google get out of the deal?

I don't know. Maybe the good feeling of providing a service for a university? They already provide this service in the States afaik.

Moorsy wrote:

They get to show you ads, for one thing that are related to the content of your messages.

Not necessarily, Google do offer a version of gmail to businesses that has the option of turning ads off.

Moorsy wrote:

Google “reads” your e-mail and shows you text ads that it deems relevant. This is very bothersome to some people. Furthermore, Google’s Terms of Service suggest that when you delete an e-mail through the Web interface, it may not be deleted from the Google storage system. Some people are pretty unhappy about this, too.

Unfortunately you can't keep everyone happy all the time.

Moorsy wrote:

And since Google is a massive search engine used by almost everyone, the fear is that providing e-mail services as well could give the company access to too much information in one place. For instance, Google could technically have the ability to correlate Web searches with e-mail content, which might serve to “profile” an individual’s interests.

Think I read somewhere recently that google are moving to be more anonymous with their data - not storing any user information with searches etc. This isn't something that really bothers me, I try not to do anything majorly illegal on the web.

Moorsy wrote:

But my real question is why is trinity giving away it present e-mail system?

There are issues with mymail about accessibility, maybe OSD could elaborate? It has obviously been decided that gmail is the best alternative on offer.

Moorsy wrote:

I don't have any problems with it but I would have a problem with Trinity selling our e-mails to Google so marketers can better target us. Does anybody else fear Google keeping logs of your e-mails for years?...

Personally I don't really have any fear of this happening. Maybe someone should contact ISS and ask them what exactly the policy will be regarding who owns the data etc.

I'm delighted that Trinity has decided to go with gmail, especially if it means that I can keep my @tcd.ie address for life. The major advantage I can see with this is that I will always have some point of contact with people in my class and others that I have met in Trinity whom I may otherwise lose contact with.

xebec

Oops. Crash got there before me.

snappieT

So is it a google server running the gmail app from within college? I ask this for two reasons:

1) If it's outside, you would have to logon to the proxy to send a mail to a fellow student.
2) If it's going to be on a different connection, the IP will change. And that means DNS propogation: 2 days by normal standards, but I've personally witnessed Trinity's DNS servers taking 14 days to update.

osd

xebec wrote:

JThere are issues with mymail about accessibility, maybe OSD could elaborate? It has obviously been decided that gmail is the best alternative on offer.

Everyone knows how much of a critic I was/am of the mymail (Horde) interface. Frankly the guys developing it don't see it as an issue to be concerned with.

Gmail is the easy solution for accessibility.

However... Speaking as a techie... Gmail doesn't have the one major thing I use that College servers currently allow me to do... Namely IMAP! I raised this issue at an ISS meeting a month or so ago and it was promised that it would be available to TCD students. For those who haven't a clue what I'm talking about, IMAP is a email retrieval protocol that allows you to connect from a private computer/laptop and have all your emails and folders the same no matter where you go. If say I lost my laptop/hard drive corrupted my email folders I'd lose the handy email folders I'd have setup and all the emails contained withn. Yes I could probably download ALL the emails again using POP but that requires a ton of sorting and removing SPAM emails all over again!

With my OSD hat on it's a yippie...
With my Comp Sci hat on it's a boooooooo hissssssssss...

osd

Moorsy wrote:

But my real question is why is trinity giving away it present e-mail system?

MyMail is a piece of free junk that was given to us when the ISS budget was slashed and we couldn't afford the previous email package 'webmail'.
Webmail was an accessible interface whilst MyMail was not. AFAIK no student consultation was given to the choosing of MyMail. Hence why the accessibility issue wasn't raised until after the event.
College policy is that all TCD websites should meet at least 'AA' web accessibility standards (set by W3C).

One additional benefit of the change to gmail is that I'll be able to use the mobile Gmail interface for checking my emails. http://m.gmail.com

xeduCat

Is the mobile access server-IMAP or web-based?

osd

xeduCat wrote:

Is the mobile access server-IMAP or web-based?

Web-based!

Nietzschean

i assume it'll be presented as it currently is, which is a web based option or platform specific clients, no imap that i've seen.....

(there are java and blackberry clients that i know of, which would cover most phone platforms, though the java one isn't super for a symbian platform it is rather speedy and functional)

Sangre

Use FF and you can get rid of gmail ads.

Nietzschean

i'd like to see is google to release a proper standalone email client, requiring mail notification software and such is silly. Though standalone email client would kinda fly in the face of their online platform kinda setup, ajax using jscript on ff/ie just isn't fit for purpose, ammount of cpu cycles/memory required to fufill the task is quite extreem...


I'd be curious as to wheither we'll see google ad's while reading our tcd mail? i assume we'll have some form of an interface hanging off tcd.ie, though would that terminate after the end of one's scholarly time?...

Nietzschean

Sangre wrote:

Use FF and you can get rid of gmail ads.

i must say google text ads arn't anything of an annoyance to be worth getting an ff extension to do that, which would add to its memory footprint even further(i do recall ff developers blaming extensions for alot of memory leaks people see at one point)

snappieT

Sangre wrote:

Use FF and you can get rid of gmail ads.

Or you could not be a firefox fanboy and just play with the host file.
(I am using firefox myself however)

fiveone

I find the change extremely innapropriate. From my (and most other's) layman perspective mymail does what its there to do in an adequate manner. The change is not justifiable from a practical point of view, especially given the issues Moorsy raised about privacy and advertising. This should be a cause of serious concern to everbody - how would you feel if An Post opened your letters to see what consumer group you fitted in to, and proceeded to disseminate your comsumer information and market to you accordingly?

The switch is symptomatic of the growing corporatisation of the university. I have to admit not being surprised by the smiling face of our ever financially savy president in the publicity photo beside Hego - I'm glad to see that privacy now counts as a "non-political" issue. Aside from that, even the more, shall we say, "corporate minded" among us should understand the disadvantages of the corporate hegemony gmail is a part of. That it isn't an issue for you personally is not a valid excuse anymore. Feel free to continue using it, I have no doubt you will, but understand it is not a question of free choice as much as myopic self-concern and willful ignorance.

One of the positives of gmail is their philosophy of 'never having to delete an e-mail again', and when you compare 2.8 GB to 0.06 GB, it's a fair bit of a difference.

Given the privacy issues, I wonder if MyMail will remain as an alternative to anyone who doesn't want GMail?

I also wonder whether we'll be allowed change usernames easily...

Duffman

Moorsy wrote:

And since Google is a massive search engine used by almost everyone, the fear is that providing e-mail services as well could give the company access to too much information in one place. For instance, Google could technically have the ability to correlate Web searches with e-mail content, which might serve to “profile” an individual’s interests.

Yes, it would be extremely easy to do this. But, based on experience, I'd be fairly happy to trust Google with this information.

What you have to remember is that this is already happening in Ireland (at least beginning to happen) since data retention legislation was passed by the EU. The government, law enforcement agencies and of course ISPs will be able to find out what you have been searching for, who you have been emailing and about what, and even where your have been with your mobile over the past 2 years (at least). (and what your boards username is, oh noes!)

We don't really know what this information will be used for. The music industry was even lobbying the European Parliament for access to it for anti-p2p purposes. It's actually fairly worrying.

Given the choice, I'd be happier for Google to have this information. The worst they're going to do is display a targeted ad for you.

osd

Moorsy wrote:

Cookies on searches are kept unitl 2038 which can be obtained by courts if need to be used as evidence in cases such as has happened in Brazil. The raw statistics don't lie; Google is responsible for 60% of all Internet searches in the United States and nearly 70% of searches throughout the UK.

AFAIK Google are aiming to delete such data after 18months to two years after the search. However I think this is still way too long.

xebec

Do google keep a copy of everyones cookies? Or do they just access them every time someone uses their search engine?

Nietzschean

google only has access to the cookies it puts in your browser to begin with, which they could easily just keep on their servers... so they don't really keep a copy of the cookies, the cookies keep a running user profile of that browser though.....

privacy wise meh would be the big thing i'd have to say, google currently don't read your mail to build some level of personal profile. Infact they just search for key words, the bots don't attempt to understand the mail's meaning at all(which is where it would get icky privacy wise). These days if you have something private to send you should encrypt it, end of story...

(for gmail/other web clients http://www.freenigma.com/ )

John

So if you delete your cookies from your machine you appear as a new user to google?

Nietzschean

John wrote:

So if you delete your cookies from your machine you appear as a new user to google?

aye pretty much yeah, they could track based on ip , but its highly useless due to potential of lots of users from 1 ip. cookies are how its done normally

xeduCat

Oh, come on. There is ample research on Chinese blocking of web content, and on Google's involvement in it; the last presentation I gave in the law school, I even prepared side-by-side results for simulated-via-China results and 'normal' ISS results.

Try the detailed results of the OpenNet initiative (Harvard and the University of Toronto): http://www.opennetinitiative.net/studies/china/ .

Would you like to try explain away the "Golden Shield"? And remember of course that traditionally academic institutions etc have had much greater access to the outside, even in the days of ARPANET and NSFNET.

On balance I do trust ISS (although I have major concerns on privacy etc from a legal point of view, I know and believe enough of the people in there that they have built in sufficient safeguards), but I do think the ethical position of the College's 'partner' is an appropriate topic for debate. I am extremely uncomfortable with what Google (and others) have done in China, but I'm also addicted to the information that they supply, which is typical of this sort of moral dilemna

On the specifically Chinese issue, I do appreciate your argument that things are changing, but I think being reppressive rather than really-repressive isn't something to get too excited about....

Nietzschean

google are a large corporation at the end of the day, given the ammount of web users in china it would be economically stupid not to have gone in there. i wouldn't let it effect my view of them supplying email services to the college, but to each their own.....

xeduCat

Indeed. I was annoyed at their decision to do a deal, not because of the China connection (everyone does it, like you say you'd be mad not to!) but because they had spent so long saying "Don't Be Evil" and so on, and advocating non-censorship etc. Google's strategy and image was that they were about 'freedom' and thus they get higher scrutiny in response.

Didn't stop me using them, though (I know a few techlaw types who are still boycotting, but it's next to impossible to function without!)

King.Penguin

did someone already mention that your email address will remain username@tcd.ie? I think that's important. It won't be username@gmail.com

Nietzschean

King.Penguin wrote:

did someone already mention that your email address will remain username@tcd.ie? I think that's important. It won't be username@gmail.com

oh yeah of course it'll be @tcd

Crash

To return to your question moorsy, I believe google are safe to use in this instance provided that ISS ensure that all of googles actions fall within trinitys own rules relating to the use of the network and internet useage.

I've still yet to be fully assured of any of this, so think I might go on a hunt for info once college gets back.

Also, lets all get back on topic.

ApeXaviour

&#231 wrote: »

Also, lets all get back on topic.

Agreed. Moorsy, Thirdfox, you can continue your discussion here if you wish:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055070511

xebec

ApeXaviour wrote:

Agreed. Moorsy, Thirdfox, you can continue your discussion here if you wish:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055070511

Thanks for that, think everyone got a bit sidetracked there!

It's great that we get to keep our tcd emails after we graduate. :cool:

ApeXaviour

<Jonny> wrote:

It's great that we get to keep our tcd emails after we graduate. :cool:

Actually yeah... they did tend to cut you off rather abruptly. As in very soon after finishing exams. This of course caused a lot of problems for friends of mine continuing into phd studies. They'd then have their original mymail account set up to forward to their gmail (from which they'd lost all contacts), this only lasting 6 months. Then get a new tcd accounts which they need to use for officialness etc.

At least this is the impression I got, maybe ed can clarify

John

The same thing happened to friends of mine, it didn't matter if they had confirmed that they were staying on months ahead, ISS have their little "fun" with the email addresses. The forwarding works for a year though, I'm still getting a load of crap from various clubs and societies.

Stargal

Yeah me too (including the Jazz Soc, which I joined in Fresher's Week 2002 and still receive regular mails from. Cheers lads).

Nietzschean

ApeXaviour wrote:

maybe ed can clarify

Am i allowed do that also?

they do cut them off very quickly, though as john said you do get forwarding for a year, all of us then forwarded stuff to gmail.
We don't really get new accounts , or at least we arn't supposed to when the phd thing kicks in, old account is kinda brought back to life in a new form.Lots of people move them back for the 'official' email sending lark, though you can add more email addresses to gmail so they appear to come from your tcd email address anyway which is what i did(and alot of academics i work with appear to do the same)

Edwardius

Aye, I got my old account back even though I was given a new username and password on registration... which didn't work while the old one did. All my old stuff was still in the filestorage as I'd left it so I'd assume they just lock it until they find out if the person is coming back. The email forwarding was useful though, I'm still running everything through gmail because that filters any spam that gets through the tcd account. I think you get booted off on something like the 12th of july and lose all TCD priveliges. Resentment soon follows.

King.Penguin

Our student cards are still valid up to October though aren't they? So we can swipe into the lazer huts but not use the computers? That's a bit ****.

shay_562

Not wanting to get sidetracked again, but given the posts above, can we expect an SU referendum to drop the g-mail deal and block Google from college computers in a year or two?