1. Description of facilities
2. Your rights and responsibilities
3. CIRCA's rights and responsibilities
4. Limitations on class accounts
5. Proper use of computing facilities
6. Penalties

CIRCA operates Windows, Macintosh, and Unix computers that are available to UF students, faculty, and staff. These computers are connected to the Internet and other computer networks and can be used for network access and other general-purpose computing.

The primary mission of these computers is to provide instructional computing facilities to students at the University of Florida. Use of these computers for essential research or administrative functions is not recommended. Commercial activity is prohibited.

Access to these computers is usually available to all students, faculty, and staff at the University, but there may be specific restrictions or requirements for a particular service. You may be required to present a UF ID card. You must have a Gatorlink account to use computers in CIRCA facilities. You can apply for a GatorLink ID online in CIRCA labs, on the web at http://www.gatorlink.ufl.edu, or in room E520 CSE. If you are not sure what service you need, talk to the consultant in room E520 CSE.

Your rights and responsibilities

Your computer account is for your use only. You must not let anyone else use your account. You are responsible for all activities that originate from your computer account.

You are responsible for the security of your password. You should choose passwords that can not be easily guessed. Passwords should not be written down, stored in a file, or shared with others.

You have a right to use these facilities without being harassed by other users. Report all incidents to CIRCA.

You have a right to expect that your files and electronic messages are reasonably private, however you must be aware that computer systems in an education environment are not always secure and your files and electronic mail may be seen by others.

You must comply with all local, state, and federal laws, and university policies. You must comply with all rules and regulations posted in public computer areas.

You must use your correct name to identify your account, either when you apply for an account or first use an account given to you by an instructor. All other personal information must be supplied when requested and must be correct and current.

You must use your correct name and computer account in all electronic mail and messages.

You are responsible for protecting your files from reading or writing.

You must report any violation of University policies, or suspected violations of policies, to CIRCA immediately.

Within the limits of the capability of the computer system, CIRCA will attempt to maintain the privacy of your files and electronic mail. However, CIRCA has the right to examine any file, backup archive, electronic mail, or printer listing as part of normal system administration or when there is a reasonable reason to believe a user is violating policies specified in this document.

CIRCA will make every effort to maintain backup copies of your files, and restore them when they are lost or damaged. However, CIRCA cannot guarantee that there is a backup copy of any file, or that a file can be restored immediately.

Within the limits of the capability of the computer system, CIRCA will maintain the privacy of your personal information, except for your name. Your name is not private and may be seen by other computer users.

CIRCA has the right to require you to present your UF ID card.

CIRCA has the right to monitor all activity on a computer system including individual sessions.

CIRCA has the right to terminate any computer session or print job that is consuming excessive resources, including idle sessions.

CIRCA has the right to revoke any account that has been used in violation of the policies specified in this document.

CIRCA has the right to delete an inactive account.

CIRCA has the right to refuse access to any person who has violated the policies in this document, or the policies of some other department.

CIRCA has the right to require you to change your password regularly, refuse to let you use some passwords, or require you to use a random password.

CIRCA has the right to limit your disk space and other available computer resources. On Unix systems, reasonable extensions of disk space and other resources can be granted to class accounts, instructor, and graduate student accounts when the resource is available and when the need is directly related to course work. No special extensions for disk space, cpu time, or priority are granted to faculty, staff, or undergraduate student accounts.

Some CIRCA computer accounts are issued to instructors for distribution to students in a class. Class accounts are to be used only by students, instructors, or teaching assistants in the class. Class accounts are for class-related work only as assigned by the instructor.

Class accounts issued to an instructor are under the control of the instructor. CIRCA may, when it is possible, give instructors the ability to control activity for their class accounts, or let instructors read and write all files, including email, in their class accounts.

You must use these facilities in an ethical and lawful manner. You must not engage in any activity that violates state or federal laws or university policy.

You must not deliberately degrade the performance of a computer or network, or consume large amounts of system resources, including disk space, computer time, paper, or dialup ports.

You must respect any disk quotas applied to your account and use as little disk space as possible. You must not use temporary areas or other areas to store large amounts of data for long periods.

You must not play computer games, including multi-user network games.

You must not interfere with the use of public workstations, terminals, or computing equipment. You must not lock, disable, or otherwise prevent other users from using equipment.

You must not develop, store, distribute, or use, programs or methods that:

• harass or interfere with other users of the computer
• "crash" or otherwise disable a computer or network
• attempt to bypass computer security facilities
• attempt to discover passwords
• attempt to consume all available system resources, including, but not limited to, cpu cycles, memory, or disk space
• are self-replicating "worm" or "virus" programs that attach to other programs
• attempt to evade software licensing restrictions

You must respect the privacy and property of all files on the computer system. You must not assume that the ability to read a file implies permission to read the file. You must not alter or erase a file belonging to another user without explicit permission to do so. The ability to alter a file does not imply permission to do so.

Files in some system directories are intended for general use and may be viewed and used if the protection on that file permits. However, files in system directories are nearly always copyrighted or licensed and must not be copied.

CIRCA computers are connected to world-wide computer networks. You must at all times comply with the conventions and rules for use any computer network. CIRCA policy requires that you must:

• not use electronic mail or messaging programs to harass or interfere with other computer users, send or post obscene or defamatory material, send excessive mail and chain letters.
• not use any CIRCA facilities to make unauthorized connections or break into, or affect the performance of any other computer system on the network, whether it is on the UF campus or anywhere else in the world
• not deliberately obscure your identity when sending electronic mail or messages
• not conduct any commercial activity

Penalties

The minimum action for violation of these policies may be an oral or written warning from a CIRCA staff member. Additional actions can include reporting the activity to the user's instructor or department, or to the Office of Student Affairs, or the appropriate law-enforcement agency.

Any infraction could result in the loss of access to the computer facilities.