Electronic Mail at the UW
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Your Default UW Email Address
Every person who has a UW NetID has a default email address of your_uwnetid@u.washington.edu or your_uwnetid@uw.edu (they are equivalent).
Official UW messages for you will be sent to your default email address, which will reach you if you are using any of the UW email services described in the Email Choices section below. If you are using some other email service, you can set forwarding to your service on the Change UW Email Forwarding page.
More information about the uw.edu domain is available on the Using the uw.edu Address page.
Email Choices
Email service at the UW is available in several forms. UW Technology offers UW Email (also known as UW Deskmail) and UW Exchange as centrally managed services. Many departments provide their own email service. Some people choose to use other non-UW email services.
UW Email
- A general email service
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UW Email (also known as
UW Deskmail) is a free email service available
for current UW students, faculty, and staff; UW
retirees; and some other
affiliates of the University. Alumni and other
former UW students can get email accounts through the
MyUW.net
service.Detailed instructions on configuring your email program to work with UW Email are available.
UW Email can be accessed with your Web browser and with a wide variety of email programs.
UW Exchange
- UW Exchange features
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UW Exchange offers integrated email, calendaring, contacts, and task management through Microsoft Outlook, Web browsers, and mobile devices. Offered to departments as a fee-based service, UW Exchange services are intended for UW faculty and staff.
- If you are interested in using UW Exchange, contact your department's IT support staff.
- Departments can arrange for Nebula to provide technical support (including providing computers) for UW Exchange users. Contact Nebula support at nebula@u.washington.edu for more information.
UW Outlook Live
- Included in UW Windows Live
-
UW Outlook Live
is a free email service available for current
UW students, alumni, and former students as part of UW Windows
Live. It provides ad-free email and calendaring
with 10 GB of storage and continued use of your
@u.washington.edu or @uw.edu email address. To
activate a UW Outlook Live account, you must sign up
for a UW Windows Live ID.
UW Google Email
- Included in UW Google Apps
-
UW Google Email
is a free email service available for current
UW students, alumni, and former students as part of UW Google
Apps. It provides ad-free email and calendaring
with over 7 GB of storage and continued use of your
@u.washington.edu or @uw.edu email address. To
activate a UW Google Email account, you must sign up
for UW Google Apps services.
Other Email Services
- Forward your UW messages
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Important messages from the University will be sent to your UW email address (your_uwnetid@u.washington.edu). If you plan to not use the central UW email services (UW Email or UW Exchange), make sure UW messages reach you by setting your email forwarding.
To forward email sent to your_uwnetid@u.washington.edu address:
- StepsActions
- Before you forward your email, check with your department about using non-UW email services, particularly if you are faculty or staff. Some departments do not allow use of external email services for certain types of messages.
- Forward your UW email to your address at the email service you will be using.
Things to Consider
- Bulk email
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Sending out large numbers of email messages (bulk email) can interfere with the operation of UW Email service for everyone and can get the UW on blacklists that prevent other UW Email from getting through. Before doing any large mailouts, see the Bulk email at the UW page.
- Privacy
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The UW Email system is provided to support UW activities and is subject to state laws, including public disclosure as part of a public records request.
- Do not send sensitive information by email. This includes personnel data, patient records, student information, and financial information. For more information, see the UW Electronic Information Privacy Policy on Personally Identifiable Information.
- Email messages can be kept and forwarded. The message you send to one person can easily spread to many more. Never assume that email is private, even when using encryption technologies.
- Email as public record
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Faculty and staff should be aware that mail messages are public records when they are created or received in the transaction of public business. As such, they must be retained as evidence of official policies, actions, decisions, or transactions in accordance with UW records retention practices:
- Management of Email (UW GS 5) - State policy on retention schedule
- RCW 42.56.070 - Documents and indexes to be made public
- Employee use of UW Email
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UW Email is made available to UW faculty and staff solely for the purpose of facilitating effective business operations.
- Other guidelines and rules
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Please take the time to review the general guidelines and rules on the use of UW computing and networking resources:
Fighting Viruses and Spam
What the UW is Doing
- Scanning and monitoring
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Most email going to and from the UW is scanned by programs that identify messages that carry viruses and rate the likelihood that a message is junk mail or "spam" (they give each message a spam score).
- Because of the massive volume of spam, these programs automatically filter out and discard all inbound and outbound messages with a spam score equal to or greater than 99 (out of a possible maximum score of 100).
- Certain types of attachments to messages are automatically removed because they are frequently used as a way to deliver malicious software (malware) to computers.
- Email going through the UW's central email servers is scanned for viruses. Any infected email message is discarded, and no notification is sent to the sender or the recipient.
What You Can Do
- Filter out spam
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Unwanted email messages (spam) fill up your Inbox and
often contain links to malicious sites that will try
to attack your computer. Use the spam filter of your
email service to minimize exposure to this hazard.
- UW Exchange users should talk to their computer support staff about the best way to set up spam filtering.
- UW Email users can go to the Email Delivery Manager to adjust the level of filtering they prefer. For a detailed explanation of the system, see Junk email (spam) filtering of UW Email.
- Be skeptical
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Computer viruses and worms are programs that makes copies of themselves and infect computer files. Most viruses and some worms need your help before they can infect your computer. You can avoid helping them by doing the following:
- Do not open unexpected email attachments. Even attachments in messages from people you know may be infected because viruses often have fake "From:" addresses.
- Do not download unknown programs, such as free screensavers.
- Do not trade lots of unknown files, such as with peer-to-peer programs like Kazaa. The more unknown files you download, the more likely that some of them contain viruses or worms.
- Do not believe amazing offers and unlikely stories.
- Keep your computer clean
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It is UW policy that all computers connecting the UW networks should be well managed to minimize the chance that they will get infected. This policy applies no matter what computer you are using (office, portable, or home) and no matter how you connect (by modem from home, by wireless in a lecture hall, from your personal ISP account, or by plugging in to a wall connection on campus).
If you do get infected, it is a very serious problem:
- An infected computer is a hazard to the UW networks and other UW computers.
- You have a responsibility to promptly clean your computer.
- Your connection to UW networks will be blocked if your computer is the source of virus and worm attacks on other computers. To be able to get to the Internet again, you will have to clean your computer (probably rebuild it) and then have your connection unblocked.
- Use antivirus software
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To further protect yourself and others from viruses, UW Technology strongly recommends that all computers accessing UW networks and services run antivirus software. The Sophos antivirus program are Tools for Safe and Secure Computing page. Be sure to regularly download and install the updated data files. New viruses are appearing constantly, and your antivirus program needs the latest data to be effective.
- Automatically update your OS and antivirus software
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Viruses and worms try to take advantage of known weaknesses in operating systems. In many cases, patches to these weaknesses are available. The safest approach is to configure your operating system to automatically install patches as they become available.
The antivirus software you use must also have current data to be able to detect the latest attacks. It is strongly recommended that you follow the instructions that come with your antivirus program to configure it to automatically update so your always have the latest data.
McAfee VirusScan antivirus software for Windows and Macintosh computers is available for download to all UW faculty, staff, and students at no charge.
Email Lists and Directory Services
Email Mailing Lists
Email lists make it easy to share email with a group of people. Messages sent to the list address are forwarded to the email address of each person subscribed to the list.
- Subscribe or unsubscribe to an existing list
- Create a new list
- Note: Requesting a new email list is not the same as subscribing to an existing one.
- Go to Starting a Mailman List.
- Create a class email list
- Faculty can request class email lists of currently registered students in credit classes. The lists are automatically updated.
- Go to MyUW, select the Teaching tab, then click MyUWClass.
- See mailing list documentation
- Go to Mailman Lists at the UW.
UW Electronic Directory Service
Directory information of UW students and employees is maintained in an online directory service that many email programs can use, making it possible to automatically retrieve a person's email address by simply entering their name in the To: field.
