Email Forwarding

Email forwarding is becoming less reliable as major commercial email providers enforce more stringent security measures. Mail sent to your @uw.edu email address can still be set to forward elsewhere (i.e. to a personal email account). However, these security measures mean the UW cannot ensure forwarded email will always reach its intended recipients.

What changed?

The University of Washington implemented email authentication for outgoing mail beginning in April of 2024. As a result, email forwarding from UW email accounts will not be delivered if the email is coming from an external address, flows through the UW Email Infrastructure, and is then forwarded to an external address. Internal UW email will still forward to an external address correctly.

As these security standards continue to be put in place, we anticipate more commercial email vendors will begin blocking non-UW email sent to your uw.edu (u.washington.edu, washington.edu and myuw.net) email addresses.

Why did it change?

The security standard that major email providers (Google, Yahoo, Apple, and others) are beginning to enforce will better protect individuals and institutions from malicious emails that seek to obtain private and confidential information. For many years, the UW email forwarding service you to use your @uw.edu email address with anyone. However, that practice is no longer compatible with modern email security standards, making it now necessary to use a non-UW email address with non-UW entities.

What do I need to do?

Current students, faculty, staff, and UW Medicine Workforce members:

You are are eligible for a UW email account - if you're not already using it, please do. Refer to the Exchange Online KB article for guidance on setting up and accessing your account.

You can configure your desired email forwarding settings at https://uwnetid.washington.edu/manage/?forward .

Graduating students may also wish to refer to the Preserve Your UW Work page for related guidance.

UW affiliates:

(i.e. You perform work on behalf of or in support of UW and its faculty, staff and students)
Have an @uw.edu email account created ("provisioned") for you and begin using it.

You can configure your desired email forwarding settings at https://uwnetid.washington.edu/manage/?forward .

Campus email administrators:

Each email domain and subdomain under the UW umbrella will need to implement DMARC, SPF, and DKIM email authentication to ensure sent mail deliverable.

What if I'm no longer eligible for UW Email services?

If you are no longer eligible for a UW email account and have been forwarding email from a non-UW entity (i.e. a bank, health care provider, etc.) to UW email account, you will need to provide those senders with a different email address to reach you. This might also include individuals, associations, publications, or organizations that are sending you email to your current UW email address; if you have published any scholarly papers, you may also wish to update your profile (i.e. sites such as orcid.org).

Tip: You can determine where email is coming from in your email account by checking the message's "headers" (every email contains a header: a detailed log of the "path" the message took to reach your mailbox).