March 16, 2005


MEMORANDUM

TO:
Deans, Directors and Department Chairpersons

FROM:
Marc Hoit, Interim Associate Provost for IT

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


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
http://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.

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