Users sending excessive amounts of email

We've got a group of ladies (in the same room even) that are sending hundreds of emails back & forth. Most of it is basically "talking behind the back" of someone else who might be in their room talking to someone. I found out about it because a bunch of messages got hung up in the queue yesterday (we're using NeverFail with our Exchange 2003 server and it had a hiccup). There were around 900 emails, of which 12 were legitimate emails. Anyone know of a program to use that would say track the number of emails a person has sent in a given day, and if it gets to say around 150 it would notify us to investigate for abuse?

My HR director is going to speak with them today to make sure they understand that everything they send or receive is archived and can be subpoenaed. An ISP I worked for a few years ago was being sued by a customer, and they subpoenaed the help desk tickets for him. Someone called him a vulgar name, and his lawyer claimed that we were prejudiced against his client on those grounds. They ended up settling with the guy, and he made off with quite a bit of money. All because of a stupid help desk ticket.

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Comments

skrpune

Um, wow, don't they realize messenger is much better for that (and less trackable)??

I gotta say though, usage of company email does get abused very very often, and I'm not too surprised. Although 900 emails?? GEEEEZ. And unless these fine examples of employees are smart enough to be clearing out their sent & deleted items on a regular basis, then aren't their email profiles getting ginormous?

arwes

Looks like two of them are keeping it cleared out, and the other two are pack rats. We have 1 GB mailbox limits (I hate it). At my last job, we had 150 MB limits and if you wanted to save anything you'd better keep it in a personal folder (we kept PSTs in the users network folder for backup).

But at any rate we keep EVERYTHING sent and received.

RTmarc

Somewhat a tangent, but how did keeping the "PSTs in the users network folder" work out? That is - or was at one point - a big no-no because of corruption issues but it is something I've always wanted to do.

tiersten

The managers should just set this as a computer usage policy IMO.

Policing this yourself will make you a tad unpopular...

Pash

tiersten wrote: »

The managers should just set this as a computer usage policy IMO.

Policing this yourself will make you a tad unpopular...

a tad unpopular? Id spit in his coffee for reading my emails

But seriously, are you actually allowed to read co-workers email contents? Even though I am a domain admin here I am never allowed to look at peoples group folders/files and other confidential data. The email system is controlled by admins at another site, so I have no scope there anyway.

arwes

We don't make it a habit of looking at employee emails unless directed to do so by their manager, but it's made perfectly clear in the employee manual that:

All e-mail correspondence is the property of <Company name>.

Employee e-mail communications are not considered private despite any such designation either by the sender or the recipient.

<Company name> reserves the right to monitor its e-mail system – including an employee’s mailbox – at its discretion in the ordinary course of business. Please note that in certain situations, <Company name> may be compelled to access and disclose messages sent over its e-mail system.

Employees are expected to use business etiquette when sending e-mail to others. Use of inappropriate language or graphics is prohibited.

Employees must be careful when addressing e-mail, especially when delivering confidential information.

Messages sent to recipients outside of <Company name>, if sent over the Internet and not encrypted, are not secure.

The existence of passwords and “message delete” functions do not restrict or eliminate <Company name's> ability or right to access electronic communications.

Employees shall not share an e-mail password, provide e-mail access to an unauthorized user, or access another user’s e-mail box without authorization.

Employees shall not post, display or make easily available any access information, including, but not limited to, passwords.

Offensive, demeaning or disruptive messages are prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to, messages that are inconsistent with <Company name's> policies concerning Equal Employment Opportunity and unlawful harassment.

If non-<Company name> employees or any 3rd-party sends any offensive, demeaning or disruptive messages, it is the employee’s responsibility to either notify the party to cease themselves or notify your <Company name> manager or the IT Department who will take appropriate steps to stop the activity.

Any employee who violates this policy shall be subject to discipline, up to and including termination.

We're a small company. I and my CTO are the only domain admins, and the only ones who can read others emails. When HR has an issue they go through us to get access to it (it rarely ever happens). Most of our users think HR can look directly at their mailboxes, and I'm not going to dispute that. I'm still the good guy!

As far as the PST's on the network go, it worked pretty good for us to a point. We started encountering corruption when they got to around 3 GB. We ended up having users create multiple PST's to get around that. I had an HR user that never deleted a single email in 7 years. She had a PST for every year. And I had to convert all of them over when the new owners swapped Outlook for Lotus Notes (so glad to be out of that place LOL).

HeroPsycho

RTmarc wrote: »

Somewhat a tangent, but how did keeping the "PSTs in the users network folder" work out? That is - or was at one point - a big no-no because of corruption issues but it is something I've always wanted to do.

It also will bring file servers to their knees. Network access to PST's hasn't been supported for a very long time.

arwes

Oh yeah, it's definitely unsupported. As far as I know, we didn't have any major network issues (I was the night shift guy running the backups and manning the help desk so I was probably asleep if anyone had issues

). So if you were to do it, it's definitely "at your own risk". I suppose I should note that the admin who put that in place was later let go for ignoring the NTBackup job that was failing for 2 weeks and the file server VM died a horrible death at the end of that 2 weeks. Much anger I sensed in those doctors.

http://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2007/01/21/network-stored-pst-files-don-t-do-it.aspx