Change in Gatorlink Student E-mail Forwarding policy at the University of Florida, Effective Oct 05

Marc Hoit, Interim Associate Provost for IT

Throughout the year, the University of Florida has many instances when it is necessary to communicate directly with students about critical information and deadlines. With the advent of WebMail capability at UF, all students now have a Gatorlink address and UFID that provides easy access from any computer on the internet. For the past two years, all official notifications from the University of Florida to students have been sent electronically to Gatorlink addresses. When the UF email service was originally implemented, students were permitted to forward their Gatorlink address to third party email providers. This was a useful process for many students and worked well for a period of time. However, with the increasing problem of unsolicited email (SPAM), the policies of the major third party providers changed. They now regularly block forwarded messages from the University of Florida as a result of their protocols. This has resulted at times, in a large number of students being unable to receive important announcements both from the University of Florida and from listservs maintained by organizations, faculty and staff.

To provide better service and more reliable information to its students, the University of Florida will discontinue the policy that permits Gatorlink addresses to be forwarded to third party accounts. Students will still be able to forward Gatorlink accounts to other email services that are maintained by their departments in the UFL.EDU domain. This policy will become effective for all students on October 1, 2005. All students are encouraged to begin using their Gatorlink email accounts as soon as possible to insure they receive all official correspondence of the University of Florida.

* Gatorlink addresses can be accessed through your browser at webmail.ufl.edu when you are away from campus or at a public terminal.

* Students will receive more reliable notification of important university announcements.

* Official University of Florida information for students, including deadlines and emergency information, will only be sent to your Gatorlink address.

* Gatorlink email addresses will no longer be forwarded to third party (non-UF) email providers such as AOL or Yahoo.

* Gatorlink email addresses can be forwarded to departmental mail servers in the UFL.EDU domain (i.e., servername.UFL.EDU).

* Changes in your Gatorlink address can be made at www.gatorlink.ufl.edu. Follow the links to remove your forwarding preferences.

* The only email address maintained by the University of Florida will be your Gatorlink address.

* You can maintain your third party email account but UF will only send official messages to your Gatorlink address.

* Student Organizations will have enhanced ability to communicate with their members by using the UF Listserv service. Point your browser to www.lists.ufl.edu to establish listservs for your student organizations.