VP Students and Alumni Engagement Office will be providing advance notification prior to shutting down Interchange.
No, these are optional services.
Yes, you can pick your name as long it is complies with the basic format and acceptable use policy.
Since you can keep your @alumni.ubc.ca address (and optional mailbox) for life, you can keep it after graduation.
You can still keep your @alumni.ubc.ca address, even if you withdraw.
You may not be able to keep your @alumni.ubc.ca address if you are expelled or suspended.
Current and past students are eligible for this service. "Student" is defined in section 1 of the University Act and includes those enrolled for undergraduate or graduate studies, enrolled in a course for academic credit, and Medical Residents.
"student" means a person who is presently enrolled at a university in a credit course or who is designated by resolution of the senate as a student; http://universitycounsel.ubc.ca/files/2010/08/University_Act_20091106.pdf
While UBC aliasing service uses the mail relays located on the Point Grey campus, email travels across the internet, which is an open channel. The security of any email depends on the level of encryption adopted by both the sender and the recipient.
Email is, by nature, insecure. While in transit, email is often unencrypted and could be intercepted. Recipients may not have secure storage, or show proper discretion in forwarding email. You should always assume email is not private. This is true for all email services.
When you check your email, alumni.ubc.ca provides a secure connection from your web browser and/or email client. This encrypts the data between you and the servers while you view it or collect mail. This is the same system that banks use to secure your connection for online banking. Mail in your UBC mailbox is unencrypted.
If you are using only the UBC Alias service, your email is only as secure as your destination email account.
As UBC considered the lifecycle of student email as a service, the types of services students have become accustomed to, and the available underlying technologies, industry leaders such as Microsoft and Google were in a position to provide solutions superior to what UBC or other providers could develop. Email is considered "utility" computing. It is a mature, well-established essential service.
Also, we want students to enjoy the value of an email address that lives on beyond their tenure at UBC.
Money saved by Faculties/Departments/Units would stay in the Faculty/Department/Unit. Central savings for email/webmail will be redeployed to higher value services. Energy savings from reducing computing infrastructure will result in a lowered power bill, an indirect cost saving to the University.
No, after the switch, your Interchange mailbox will no longer be accessible. Only the email address is available for continued use until such time that we decommission the domain name interchange.ubc.ca. Currently, there are no plans to decommission the interchange.ubc.ca domain name.
This is a personal account and you are prohibited from using it to conduct official UBC business. If you are a Student Employee, Teaching Assistant, or Researcher, you will have a FASmail (Faculty and Staff) mail account for this purpose. Faculties may choose to include most Graduate Students as well.
No, department domain addresses are reserved for official Faculty and Staff correspondence.
You will be given the opportunity to declare your Interchange email address as a 'Business' or a 'Personal' address. If you receive correspondence that includes confidential or proprietary UBC information or information that is personal to other people, you must declare your account a 'Business' account.
If you use your Interchange account for UBC Business, it will be migrated to FAS mail.
If you use your Interchange account for personal mail, it will be migrated to Student Email as follows:
Pre-existing CWLid@interchange.ubc.ca and CWLid@NetInfo.ubc.ca addresses will be 'grandfathered', and forwarded to your new @alumni.ubc.ca address.
Mail migration is the responsibility of the student. Further instructions on how to migrate your mail will be posted here shortly.
No. You can choose to use the UBC aliasing service only (hosted on-site by UBC's Email Relay), and forward it to a mailbox of your choosing. Or you may choose not to use the alias service at all.
No. This is the case for almost all email, regardless of the provider. Just as is true today, if private communication is desired over email you should put the document somewhere in a secure web site and send a link in the email rather than the document itself. Alternatively, use SMIME or PGP encryption with your email program.
Yes, however once you send your medical records to an instructor, any medical information attached to that email may be stored in servers located around the world and accessible by law enforcement agencies as required by the jurisdiction of the Vendor.
Yes, however once you discuss any academic information with your instructor, that information will be stored in servers located around the world and accessible by law enforcement agencies as required by the jurisdiction of the Vendor.
Several options were considered, some free and some not free. While these vendors are not the only options, we consider them the best options overall. Considerations include:
Many universities and colleges recognize that email and calendaring are utility services and are getting out of directly supporting these services. Many schools in Canada, including University of Alberta, St Thomas University, Wilfred Laurier University, and Lakehead University are using Google for Faculty, Staff, and Student email. Other Canadian university implementations are underway.
In British Columbia, Kwantlan Polytechnic University (17,000 students) and Vancouver Community College have adopted Microsoft services.
Mail migration is the responsibility of the student. Further instructions on how to migrate your mail will be posted as the service becomes available.
Microsoft and Google email offering both allow access via the web, and through email clients. Further information will be posted here once the email service provider has been selected.
Your UBC account would be separate from your other personal accounts. Both alumni.ubc.ca and public Gmail/Microsoft accounts exist separately.
Deleted messages can be recovered by the user for up to 30 days from the Trash folder. After 30 days, or if you delete the message from the Trash folder it will be deleted forever.
alumni.ubc.ca accounts provisioned through Microsoft and Google will have a mailbox size limit at least 7 GB. Other options under consideration will be under 1 GB per user.
alumni.ubc.ca is a personal email account and will not be synchronized with CWL or other UBC services.
Our agreement with the vendors state that Active Student accounts will not display corporate or Vendor advertising. Accounts for people who are not current students may show advertising in the future.
Web Access will look different. If you use the same email client software, access from other programs and devices will remain the same, using IMAP, ActiveSync, or POP connections.
You would not be required to change your homepage. However, you may choose to use my.ubc.ca as your homepage, which would let you quickly and easily logon to your UBC-provisioned mailbox and other University resources.
Yes, you can continue to use Microsoft Word and other programs you are used to using.
If you have a way to access the internet, then yes.
The Vendor can recover messages up to 5 days later on a case-by-case basis.
UBC supports issues regarding your email alias, and your entitlement to the alias service. Mailbox support is supplied by the vendor directly.
Yes. This can be set up by the user accordingly to the vendor's set up instructions.
Students are responsibility for their own service costs.
Users should verify compatibility of the vendor's tools with other software before proceeding.
