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Email Forwarding for Graduating Students
As the end of the school year and graduation
approach, the Office of Information Technology and Media Services would like to
provide you with some information to ease your transition from HDS to your
future provider of email services.
To whom does this message pertain?
The information contained in this document is very important for students who
will be graduating in June. Other students may also find the following
information useful, as it describes services available at any time, to all
students, and it may be helpful preparation for students graduating in future
years.
What happens to my HDS accounts when
I graduate?
Students who will be graduating from HDS this June will have their HDS email and
computer facility (lab) accounts
terminated at the end of August. This means that you will no longer have access to the
computer facility machines,
Webmail, or other forms of remote access to your accounts at HDS, starting at
the end of August.
What if I'm going to be staying at
HDS after graduation?
Email deletion lists are based on the list of graduating students sent to
the Office of Information Technology and Media Services by the HDS Registrar's
Office. If
you will be staying at HDS beyond August, contact either the department you
will be working with (e.g., Andover-Harvard Theological Library) or the HDS registrar.
Can I forward my mail?
You can forward your mail only as long as you have an account at HDS.
Essentially, this means that your HDS email address will cease to forward any
mail sent to you at HDS at the end of August, when your account is closed. As
outlined below, Harvard offers a more robust, permanent email forwarding
solution for graduating students, and it is our hope that by informing you of
these options in advance of graduation, you will have adequate time to prepare.
Please understand that your address,
username@hds.harvard.edu, will not forward any mail after the end of August.
What are my options?
There are some special services you may be
interested in learning more about. Two types of services are discussed
here: 1) free email services; and 2) "email address services" (some of
which are free, and some of which are not).
Free email Services
Free email services are what you would expect them to be: (almost) fully
functional, online, web-based email applications that allow you to send and
receive mail for free. Free email services are beneficial because you can use
them for any type of email (within the realm of legality), whereas your HDS
mail is for academic use only. As a result, millions of users take advantage of
free email services because of the privacy and security they offer. In fact,
corporate users are among the highest peer groups on the web that use free
email services.
Here is a sampling of popular free
email services. All three of these services also have a "premium" version, where you
pay a fee to get more storage space. Please note that HDS does not specifically endorse any
one of the
services below:
Hotmail (www.hotmail.com)
is owned and operated by Microsoft. Hotmail has a storage capacity of 5GB and any single attachment can be as large as 10MB.
Users of the .NET Passport service (e.g. MSN Messenger) will like the fact
that Hotmail uses the Passport login. Yahoo! Mail (mail.yahoo.com)
provides an unlimited space allocation, and any single attachment can be as large as 10MB.
As with Hotmail, Yahoo! ties other services in with the Yahoo! Mail ID. Google Gmail (mail
google.com.)
offers 2GB of storage, and an attachment size limit of 10MB. Once again, various Google services are tied in
with the Gmail ID.
Email address services
Not everyone wants another email account. Because of this, some companies and
institutions have set up free "email address services" to provide
lifetime forwarding addresses. These services do not provide you with access
to email capabilities directly. They only offer you a forwarding email
address, which you can variably configure to point to real email services,
wherever they may be. This allows you to change email providers without having
to notify everyone on your email list.
We will mention two services here:
one offered by Harvard's Alumni Association, and another by a Pobox.com.
Harvard's "Post.Harvard"
Post.Harvard is not an Internet Service Provider or a free-email provider.
Post.Harvard provides a simple and convenient forwarding service for students
and alumni
of the University. Post.Harvard also provides a directory listing of alumni,
alumni and class message boards, and information about career development.
To register for this service, visit www.post.harvard.edu.
Although current students may register at any time, graduating students are encouraged
to register as soon as possible in order to take full advantage of
the service. This is a free service, although students should be aware that
registering for this service will provide the Harvard Alumni Association a
constant link to your email address. Pobox.com
Pobox.com is a paid service, offering what Post.Harvard offers and more.
Fees start at $20/year for service. In addition to basic email forwarding,
Pobox.com offers (configurable) junk mail filtering, URL forwarding (if you
have a web page, for example), and multiple email aliases.
What do I do with this information?
That depends on your situation.
First, make sure that you have some
form of real email access that will continue beyond the end of August. If you
are already checking your email from home, it is likely that you already have
another email account via your Internet Service Provider (for example, those of
you who have a cable modem from Comcast have a username@comcast.net address
included with the service).
If you do not have an email account
already that will continue past August, you could sign up for a free email
service.
With one of these two conditions
fulfilled, you are now in a position to decide whether or not you would like to
have a permanent email forwarding address from a service like Post.Harvard, or
not. Again, the benefit of a Post.Harvard address is that you will have an email
address you can publicize that will never change. You may change schools or
access providers, but your Post.Harvard address will continue to route mail to
you as long as you keep that service up to date with valid email account
information.
However, for now, you may just begin to
use and publicize your alternative email account address.
You can change the details of your
account, including your password and forwarding options, by visiting HDS Webmail:
https://mail.hds.harvard.edu/exchange
To forward your HDS email to another
account, you will need access to Internet Explorer on a PC. For instructions on
using this feature, see the instructions for mail
forwarding.
You should configure your HDS email
account to point to your alternative, permanent email account as soon as
possible. Then, publicize your new email address.
Please understand that users who send email
to your HDS email account after the end of August will receive an error message. That
email
will not reach you, and there will be no way for it to be forwarded to you.
If you have any questions,
please direct your inquiries to hdshelp@hds.harvard.edu.
Thank you and congratulations on your
graduation from Harvard Divinity School!
Office of Information Technology and
Media Services
Harvard Divinity School
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