The Official Web site for the Office of Information Technology - UTSA

UTSA provides electronic mail accounts for use by students, faculty members, staff and others affiliated with the university, and sets policy for the appropriate use of e-mail to further its mission and goals.  This standard supplements the e-mail policies articulated in the UTSA Acceptable Use Policy.

E-mail is not to be used for commercial purposes, for personal financial gain, to support political candidates or fund raising, or to support outside organizations not otherwise authorized to use University facilities.  Additionally, e-mail may not be used to transmit unencrypted confidential information, obscene materials, hoaxes, scams, false warnings or similar materials.

All students registered for classes at the University are provided an e-mail account, but they may choose to have University e-mail sent to an alternate address.  Students are responsible for reading official University e-mail in a timely manner.

Faculty members and staff are assigned an e-mail account upon their home department’s approval to grant them access to UTSA e-mail. Faculty members and staff will frequently receive official notices and e-mail through the central UTSA e-mail system – no other e-mail system will be used for these notices.  Faculty members and staff may not use a non-UTSA e-mail account to conduct university business, except in emergency situations (disasters, etc.).

UTSA e-mail carries no guarantee of absolute privacy.  Computer users should be aware that e-mail messages are considered to be state records; emails are subject to legal disclosure and discovery, as well as to copyright laws.

E-mail must be used in a manner that does not expose UTSA to risk.

E-mail must be managed in accordance with the UTSA Records Retention policy and schedule. The staff of OIT will back up emails* according to announced schedules, but the owner of the account is responsible for deleting records that are no longer needed, as indicated in the Records Retention policy. Most casual e-mail messages are "transitory records" and can be discarded after their purpose is served.

*Institutional backups are created solely for the purpose of restoring the entire electronic mail system in the event of a disaster. Backup tapes do not allow for the restoration of departmental electronic mail systems or individual mailboxes and cannot be used as a convenience to retrieve "deleted" messages.

Effective Date:

June 15, 2011

Compliance Date:

August 1, 2011

Last Revision:

June 15, 2011