It was the middle of the night, and Colin Crug had drunk too much. Worried about a test the next day, he fumbled around with his e-mail account, finally “diagnosing” himself with pneumonia in an e-mail to his professor.
When he awoke the next morning, Crug realized the test was in fact not that day, but at a later date making his “pneumonia” a useless excuse. He called the professor, chalked the illness up to the flu and went to class. If Crug had installed Google’s new Mail Goggles setting on his account, his entire situation could have been avoided.
Mail Goggles is a setting in Google’s e-mail server, Gmail, that allows users to filter e-mails during certain times of the day when they might be drinking or otherwise impaired. When a user tries to send an e-mail during their set times, a series of five math problems appears and if the sender can’t solve them, the e-mail doesn’t send.
The math problems range in difficulty from one to five, and users can choose their level of difficulty. Level one consists mainly of subtraction and addition, with a random simple multiplication problem thrown in. Level five involves three-digit numbers and even division.

The sender has 60 seconds to answer the math problems. If any of them are answered incorrectly, Gmail will not send the message. Instead, the screen displays a message in bright red text: “Water and bed for you. Or try again.” The sender can try as many times as he or she likes, but until all of the questions are answered correctly in the allotted time frame, the e-mail doesn’t leave the “drafts” folder.
University students are enthusiastic about the concept of Mail Goggles. Sophomores Heather Spickard and Leslie Thissen both have drunk-messaging horror stories. Thissen once confessed to being in love with her best friend, and on one occasion, Spickard text-messaged the best friend of her crush and confessed her entire lovelorn situation.
Junior Janessa Grotefend called Mail Goggles “awesome,” and sophomore Kamal Ali said it was “pretty cool.”
While students are excited about the idea, many feel it falls short of being truly useful. Ali pointed out that it doesn’t really apply to college students because most use phones or text messages to send drunken communications.
“Having to log on to your computer is just too much to ask,” Grotefend said. Junior Brendan Goodnough agreed.
“It wouldn’t work for me,” he said. “I’d just drop the setting.”
If there is one computer application students agree they need, it’s Mail Goggles for Facebook. Both Grotefend and Goodnough said they’d never drunk e-mailed, but had used Facebook under the influence many times.
Spickard attested to the dangers of using Facebook under the influence. “I was Facebooking all my friends about how much I loved rum, but I kept hitting ‘i’ instead of ‘u’ so I went on and on and on about how much I loved rim,” she said.
Some students aren’t convinced the math problems would be enough of a deterrent. Both Ali and Crug were sure they could solve five simple math problems even after a few drinks.
However, Crug admits the Mail Goggles might have prevented his pneumonia message. Even if he could have solved the problems, “It’d be actually pressing the buttons I’d have trouble with.”
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