SUPPOSE someone important to you had e-mailed you three months ago -- or three years ago -- and you wanted to see, now, what she said then. Maybe it could help you land a job, rebuild a relationship or simply remember what it was like when the two of you were close -- or when she was alive. Could you do it?
Can you be sure you'll be able to do it, three years from now?
It may depend on the technology you use -- and what you do when the University's department of Information Technology and Communications stops providing your e-mail server.
When you use Web-based e-mail, your messages, new and old, are stored on your mail provider's servers. That makes it possible for you to read your messages from any computer with Internet access. But it also means that your provider, not you, controls your e-mail. It can delete it, impose new requirements for you to access it, change its access methods in ways that do not suit your (possibly unusual) needs or reveal it to third parties such as the government. (Privacy gets some protection from the law, the policies of individual providers and the fact that perceived violations can lead to controversies that embarrass technology companies.)?
An e-mail provider has some control in any case. After all, e-mail has to be stored on its server before you can download it. But with a traditional e-mail service, you download it to your computer (via a protocol called "POP") in order to view it. Then it's on your machine, which you own and control.
Among other things, that gives you access to your own e-mail archives. With suitable backups, you can make sure you never lose your old e-mails -- even if you change providers. So for example, if my former university ever figures out that I'm no longer an adjunct there and closes my e-mail accounts, it can't delete my correspondence with my former students. Those messages are on my hard drive, not the institution's. And the same applies if I get tired of a commercial Internet service provider's service: My e-mail is on my computer, so changing ISPs doesn't mean abandoning it.
If your institution or ISP provided your e-mail address, you still have to tell your contacts where to send you e-mail. But traditional e-mail has an advantage here, too: Since you still have your old messages, you still have their return addresses. So you know where to send your address updates. Of course, if you want to avoid having to send them, there is always the solution of registering your own domain name; then you can change e-mail providers while keeping your address.
Right now, ITC, using University servers, is providing traditional e-mail service as well as Web-based e-mail for many University students. But it has decided to stop. "We're getting out of the e-mail provisioning business for students," James L. Hilton, vice president and chief information officer of the University, said.
In place of University-provided e-mail, students will now be offered two choices -- or really three, but the third hasn't gotten the attention it deserves.
The two options ITC is promoting are e-mail services from Google and Microsoft. Both are primarily known as Web-based e-mail services.
Google's Gmail does provide access through the POP and SMTP protocols of traditional e-mail, as Jeff Keltner, who works on the education market for Google, confirmed. (SMTP handles outgoing mail.) Even if you use the Web interface, he said, you can download e-mail the old-fashioned way too -- including at least some old e-mail. Google is "extremely committed" to supporting a variety of ways to access your e-mail, he said.
An interview with a Microsoft representative could not be obtained, but an e-mail from the company seemed to indicate that at least one e-mail program, Microsoft Outlook, would be able to access the e-mail of students who chose Microsoft's service.
The third option is to pick your own e-mail provider. Jim Jokl, director of communications and systems at ITC, told me that the University can forward your e-mail to the address of your choice. And even after you graduate, Jokl said, you will be able to change your forwarding address.
It would be better if the University continued to provide traditional e-mail service for current students itself. Failing that, ITC should make clear what students have to do if they want to use an e-mail provider other than Google or Microsoft; when the time comes for each user to make the switch, the choice of using an independent provider should be made as easy as possible -- if you already have the account you want to use, having the University forward your e-mail there and not give you a Google or Microsoft account should be as easy as choosing one of those companies.
But whatever the University does, individuals who value their e-mail should make sure to store it on their own computers, and to back it up frequently.
Alexander R. Cohen's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at acohen@cavalierdaily.com.
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