Special Guest Author: Bailey, CEO, Bailey Security.

Because internal communication and e-mail security is so dear to my heart, I could sit here and discuss United's new e-mail service until the cows (even the ones with Foot and Mouth Disease) come home.  Instead, I'll try and keep this article as short as possible!

United Airlines flight attendants are finally getting what other employees at the company have already had for a long time: a corporate e-mail address.  Using the current most reliable form of communication, Onboard Service recently dropped a paper letter dated May 13, 2001 into your domicile mailboxes detailing the particulars of this new e-mail service.

You can read that letter for yourself, but basically this new e-mail system will allow you to have a free e-mail account with an address similar to mary.mainliner@ual.com.  

Once you obtain this e-mail address, you can then check it from any computer connected to the internet.  This is similar to other free services such as www.hotmail.com or the like.  In fact, web-based e-mail is so common, easy-to-obtain, and simple to use that I considered offering all of you yourname@jumpseatnews.com.  But then Christopher had to step in and insist that it would take time and resources away from his writing and posting articles on this goofy website.

Make no mistake about it, United intends on utilizing this new e-mail service to "allow you to receive important information about your job and the company including news about United, Onboard Updates and numerous other timely documents and publications."  This is made clear in their May 13 letter.

The decision to sign up for United's free e-mail service is yours alone--and I won't attempt to swing you either way.  Here are the pros and cons:

PROS

• Similar to other free email services, you can check your UAL e-mail from any computer connected to the internet, and hopefully this will wean as many people away from using CompuServe 2000 as possible.
• Unlike Unimatic e-notes, you have the ability write more than two pages using this new system.  This might be useful for people like Christopher, who have problems ending a simple thought or article!  Then again, being forced to fit your thoughts into two simple pages is very good practice for anyone, believe me.
• United will offer 'technical assistance' in their domiciles.  This is good because some people may need the in-person assistance which is offered free of charge.
• Because this e-mail service is administered through UAL, there probably won't be the onslaught of advertising and Spam that normally accompany free web-based e-mail accounts.

CONS

• The user interface is not as fast nor flexible as other, already-established free e-mail hosting services.  You don't have as many options either, such as the ability to send MS Office document attachments--although United's e-mail provider says they intend to add that ability later this year.  But why wait?
• Each month the UAL e-mail system will be inoperative for a few hours and you will receive notification regarding the outages.  What's funny is that their May 13th letter goes on to state that "most of the time you will not notice this because these activities usually take place at night."  Night where?  In Chicago?  In Timbuktu?  Some of the UAL flight attendants are based in Europe and Asia, after all!
• "You should not have any expectation of privacy for any messages you send or receive, either while in transit or while stored.  United reserves its right to monitor, intercept, retrieve, decode, copy, delete or disclose all E-messages."   That quote comes straight from UAL's Official E-Mail Use Policy---and this policy is sent to you the second you sign-up.  This is a BIG ISSUE and one that you ought to consider very carefully before signing up for their service.

Ultimately the decision is yours.  Thanks for listening!

Bailey
bailey@jumpseatnews.com.

Note: If you are using United's new e-mail system to write back to Bailey, your contents may be monitored as per the terms of the Official E-Mail Use Policy!