Forwarding work emails to private mailboxes
Many TUM employees forward their work emails to other mailboxes. This is okay as long as it involves a TUM mailbox or a departmental email server.
It becomes problematic when you forward work emails to private email providers such as GMX, Googlemail or Web.de. In this case, the emails leave the secure TUM IT infrastructure and are stored on an external server. As illustrated by numerous instances of private providers being subjected to mass data theft and hacker attacks over the past few years, these emails are not adequately protected on these sites. Furthermore, Google's user terms and agreement, to cite one example, allows Google to analyze the content of emails and use it for advertising and marketing purposes.
Confidentiality of work-related matters
There are important reasons why you should pay attention to the security of your work emails as an employee of TUM. As a civil service employee, you are obligated by law to treat university business matters confidentially and safeguard them against external access.
If you are sending confidential committee documents, confidential unpublished research results or even personal data (such as from the personnel or examination office), handle this information with utmost care. An originator of an email to your address has no way to check if it will be forwarded to a private address and typically assumes it will be treated confidentially.
Keeping private and work emails separate
As a matter of principle, you should keep private and business email correspondence strictly separated for reasons of confidentiality and IT security. That also means no automatic forwarding to private email accounts.
Utilization of the TUM mail server
There are, of course, alternatives for securely accessing your work emails while underway or at home. Many of the TUM email servers already offer access to the TUM email system via the Internet, for instance. This allows you to send and receive emails at any time, from anywhere in the world.
As a TUM employee, you automatically have a mailbox on the TUM Exchange server: your @tum.de email address in TUMonline. This mailbox offers many advantages:
- You can access your emails around-the-clock, from anywhere in the world, via https://mail.tum.de. Log in with your TUM ID and personal password.
- You can also forward emails from a TUM-internal department address to your @tum.de email address.
- You can find additional information about using Exchange, as well as detailed instructions in the FAQ.
- Note: Do not save the password for https://mail.tum.de in the browser on your private PC. Instead, enter it each time you log in. This allows you to safeguard your work emails from access by others living in your home and increases protection against attacks.
Instructions for switching to TUM Exchange
If you are still forwarding your work emails to a private account, please change this setting as soon as possible and use one of the aforementioned alternatives!
If you have activated forwarding in TUMonline, you only have to change the delivery method from "forward only" to "TUM mailbox" under "Email addresses." Instructions are available at: http://go.tum.de/581341.