Beginning in March, students will no longer be able to use the university WebMail system but will be required to register a “preferred” off-campus e-mail address, such as at Gmail, Yahoo or AOL, to which their @du.edu address can be forwarded.
The e-mail system for faculty and staff will not change.
Students will continue using their DU-provided address of their firstname.lastname@du.edu while they are attending DU.
Beginning Oct. 1, DU stopped issuing new e-mail accounts to new students.
In the announcement e-mail sent to all students yesterday, University Technology Services (UTS) urges students to register the address immediately. Once the address is registered, UTS will send a confirmation e-mail and students will have 10 days to move all e-mails to the new address before their DU e-mail account is deleted permanently.
Students may change their “preferred” off-campus e-mail address at any time.
According to the e-mail, DU has offered basic e-mail services for more than 20 years, and its current system, using Sun Java, is 6 years old. When the initiative was announced in the spring, Ken Stafford, vice chancellor of communications, said it was at the end of a typical lifespan. He then estimated that a replacement university-wide system would cost $350,000.
In an e-mail sent to all DU faculty and staff last week, UTS said, “Considering the online alternatives, the costs associated with continuing and improving our current services, and after reviewing what other higher education sites are doing, the university decided to no longer compete with the low-cost and free e-mail services available to students.”
Currently, DU spends around $100,000 per year on e-mail security initiatives, which block some 2 million spam messages per day. On a bad day, the DU mail server is hit with 24 spam e-mails, separate from the ones marked “suspicious.”
Already, more than half of DU students forward their university e-mails to another account, Stafford said in the spring.
Another alternative considered in the search for a new e-mail system was Gmail, however Google could not guarantee privacy, and according to Stafford, the university couldn’t receive answers on the process for holding or archiving e-mails for legal issues.
Students’ DU e-mail addresses will remain active until 290 days after graduation, or when students stop taking classes.
To register the “preferred” e-mail address, visit myweb.du.edu, select “Personal Information,” then “Update e-mail addresses.” Students with questions may contact the UTS helpdesk at 303-871-4700 or visit www.du.edu/studentemail.
