Important information about auto-forwarding emails and changes to Deleted Items

This applies to all staff, students, affiliates and researchers. 

As part of ongoing efforts to improve email management, security, and compliance with regulations, the University will be introducing the following changes: 

 

 1. Blocking auto-forwarding of emails to external email accounts  

There is a significant security risk in allowing University emails to be auto-forwarded to external email accounts: 

• Personal or sensitive data will be stored outside of the University's control 
• Auto-forward rules can be used maliciously by attackers to extract information 

Once this change is introduced: 

• Any existing auto-forwarding rules which send email to external email accounts (e.g. your private email account) will stop working. 
• Any new auto-forwarding rules created after the change is introduced to send email to external email accounts will not work. 
• Existing and new auto-forwarding rules which send email to internal University accounts will continue to work. 
• The change only affects auto-forwarding. You will still be able to manually forward messages to external accounts where appropriate. 

The change to block auto-forwarding will be introduced on Tuesday 1 March 2022 

If you want to view multiple email accounts in one email application, please follow these instructions.

 

2. Automatic deletion of email held in “Deleted Items” folder 

Currently, when you delete an email in Microsoft Outlook, the email is retained in the Deleted Items folder until manually removed. 

To ensure we are meeting our obligations for data retention and compliance with regulations, we will be rolling out auto-deletion of email items in the Deleted Items folder.  This includes emails located in subfolders of Deleted Items.  This affects both your University email account and shared University email accounts.  

This change will be introduced in stages: 

Date	What will happen?
1 May 2022	From this date, only emails deleted in the last 3 months will be retained.  All older deleted emails will be removed.
1 August 2022	From this date, only emails deleted in the last 1 month will be retained.  All older deleted emails will be removed.

 

For queries or technical assistance concerning these changes, please contact IT Support. 

For advice about managing your emails, see the University’s Email Management guidance.