Organisations which insist on giving their students/employees/etc email addresses that are something other than their name @ wherever

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I think this is a very silly idea!

― MarkH (MarkH), Saturday, 13 September 2003 08:24 (twenty-two years ago)

this was prompted by seeing Archel's e-mail address at s*ss*x on the list of ilx users, btw. I would not be happy with my initials followed by a number.

especially if it was a big number - I'd think "Hrrmpph! I'm only the 100th most important mh working here!"

― MarkH (MarkH), Saturday, 13 September 2003 08:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Pete to thread!

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 13 September 2003 09:20 (twenty-two years ago)

universities often do it as a student security measure, preventing stalking an whatnot.

― Ed (dali), Saturday, 13 September 2003 09:23 (twenty-two years ago)

I think Oxford's newer uni is one of the worst - they give their students a long number (abt 8 digits I think) which starts with the last 2 digits of the year they started uni. the obv problem with this is that if you make a typo you don't get the email bounced back with a failure notice but it simply goes to the wrong person!

but staff there get email addresses with their actual names. This is a bit direspectful to the students, don't you think?

― MarkH (MarkH), Saturday, 13 September 2003 09:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Now that's just bonkers taking it too far. Sheffield was year, department, initials, so mine was MEA98ESL@shef

― Ed (dali), Saturday, 13 September 2003 09:25 (twenty-two years ago)

<pedant>that's department, year, initials!</pedant>

now MEA what could that be....

Mediaeval European Art
Mechanical Engineering & Architecture

― MarkH (MarkH), Saturday, 13 September 2003 09:32 (twenty-two years ago)

Mechanical engineering list A (duplicate initials went on lists B and C)

― Ed (dali), Saturday, 13 September 2003 09:43 (twenty-two years ago)

I was itubn, which was fine by me.

― Mark C (Mark C), Saturday, 13 September 2003 09:50 (twenty-two years ago)

why itubn?

― MarkH (MarkH), Saturday, 13 September 2003 09:56 (twenty-two years ago)

nottingham uni give people codes that don't even make any lexiconal connection

mine was something like

[email protected]

ps = computer science Bsc(?!!)
ys = started in year 1998
kpyc = initials

huh?

it does make sense to put these info in to avoid duplication and also I guess it prevents any future ken c's who go to my uni to receive any sordid emails that were meant for me. But there must be a better way than "psyskpyc"

― ken c, Saturday, 13 September 2003 10:27 (twenty-two years ago)

I saw that and immediately thought PSYCHIC KEN

― MarkH (MarkH), Saturday, 13 September 2003 10:29 (twenty-two years ago)

e.g. being computer science geeks we had our own subdomain and we have a seperate email address

[email protected]

kpc = initials
98 = started in 98
c = single honour cs (as opposed to joint honour with business etc.)

if each department get their own subdomain it may help (or add to the confusion as people have to rememebr what department you were in)

― ken c, Saturday, 13 September 2003 10:29 (twenty-two years ago)

i knew you'd think that mark. before you even said it.

― ken c, Saturday, 13 September 2003 10:31 (twenty-two years ago)

inadvertantly recalling Nottingham's old name while you were abt it:

kpc98c@cs.nott.ac.uk

― MarkH (MarkH), Saturday, 13 September 2003 10:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Ah dear old [email protected], actually, that's just been reactivated as I'm doing a business studies course at my old alma mater, giving me the oldest student email account there. Get in!

― Matt (Matt), Saturday, 13 September 2003 10:39 (twenty-two years ago)

This is classic. I work at (ISP provider) who give out randomly generated user names and passwords that you CANNOT change. Employees have been keeping track of the best ones including: IPOOUPOO and GAY69.

― dog latin (dog latin), Saturday, 13 September 2003 14:19 (twenty-two years ago)

I have the very nice [email protected] where I work. Not too many Skidmores around.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 13 September 2003 14:56 (twenty-two years ago)

At Hampshire College, I was bwkF93:

B ill
W alker
K te'pi, entering in
F all of 19
9
3

Which sucked, but at least some people could remember it. Worse was UNO, bwkdc:

B ill
W alker
K te'pi
D rama and
C ommunications

Drama and Communications wasn't my department -- they just didn't know where to put a pop culture major, and that'd been my major (such as it is) at Hampshire. No one ever remembered this one.

My email address now is just "bill." (well, with the @soandso).

― Tep (ktepi), Saturday, 13 September 2003 14:58 (twenty-two years ago)

My two first e-mails at college were arbitrary (the first one I got was for taking a CS class; the second one was they started giving them to everyone).

It was [email protected]

L4L = only thing that actually meant me; was arbitrary, but we had fun guessing what it might mean (lust for life, lips for love, etc.)
QC = queens college
QCVAXA = queens college VAX computer A (though I don't remember if there was a computer B)
ACC = not actually sure what this part meant
QC = queens college, for the third time! hello, redundancy, hello!

― Chris P (Chris P), Saturday, 13 September 2003 16:26 (twenty-two years ago)

We switched over to a new system that's basically your first initial, the first six letters of your last name, and then sequential numbering for each instance of that ordering. Very simple - the only thing you really have to know is the person's name and which number they'd be. Obviously the really obscure names all end with 1.

Don't they let you guys have aliases too? I mean, that's always a big help.

― Girolamo Savonarola, Saturday, 13 September 2003 17:59 (twenty-two years ago)

my uni had our student number as our emails, yawn. After I graduated they changed to sort of a weird license-plate-style thing. where it was XXXYYY where XXX were your initals and YYY were three random letters or numbers. I don't have a middle name, so I don't know what they would have done with me.

― teeny (teeny), Saturday, 13 September 2003 18:03 (twenty-two years ago)

"ACC" : Chris, I was e4kqc(at)qcunix1, etc. I think the "ACC" refers to "Academic Computing," housed in that little arts and crafts hut adjacent to the bookstore.

― Benjamin (benjamin), Saturday, 13 September 2003 18:25 (twenty-two years ago)

OK, that isn't the sort of thing I expected to learn on ILX.

― Chris P (Chris P), Saturday, 13 September 2003 19:04 (twenty-two years ago)

So, like, what's your major?

― Chris P (Chris P), Saturday, 13 September 2003 19:06 (twenty-two years ago)

man the spambots atre going to love this thread

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Saturday, 13 September 2003 19:43 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, well, if they flood my ancient e-mail account with spam, so be it.

― Chris P (Chris P), Saturday, 13 September 2003 19:47 (twenty-two years ago)

aha but not every email addy up there is an old one

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Saturday, 13 September 2003 19:51 (twenty-two years ago)

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Organisations which insist on giving their students/employees/etc email addresses that are something other than their name @ wherever - c or d?