Receiving and Sending Email

Beware of spam and phishing emails

Be cautious when an email asks you to provide personal or financial details, even if the message appears to come from a trusted source. Please DO NOT RESPOND to the email before you confirm the true identity of the sender. Please note that ICTO publishes important information through “E-Bulletin” and “UM Today” only.

Always check the recipients’ addresses

When sending email messages, always verify that you are using the correct email address.

Give a clear subject heading when sending message

A subject heading that states clearly the purpose of the email enables recipients to differentiate normal emails from spams or phishing emails.

Compose a new email to avoid disclosing the email’s content

We always encounter this situation that the emails consist of the preceding email contents.  When replying and forwarding emails, please be aware of the content confidentiality when adding new recipients to the recipient’s list. If the email contents should be kept private or not appropriate to disclose to the additional recipients, please open a new email, and write the necessary information to the recipients only.

Avoid sending large attachment

Some recipients are reluctant to open suspicious attachments which are common carriers of computer viruses. Sending large attachments to multiple recipients may also strain email servers. Senders are strongly recommended to use “E-Bulletin” for large attachments. As E-Bulletin message only saves a copy of the message in the database, it will save the resource of storage space and reduces the electricity consumption in writing the same email into many mailboxes.

Make sure the emails have been submitted to mail server

Your email (one you have sent) is saved in the Sent Items folder when the email is successfully submitted. If you can’t find it in Sent Items folder, please check your Outbox folder which is a folder for pending emails. If you find email in Outbox, it means that the email is not sent out and you need to resend it manually.

Be careful when sending mass emails

Instead of mass emailing, in general practice, senders should make use of “E-Bulletin” to reach a large number of recipients for messages related to special events, seminars, news, internal notices, etc.

When a person needs to send a mass email to one or more email groups of other departments, sender must obtain the approval from the respective faculty’s Dean/secretary or office/unit’s Director. Email can be sent by the authorized person(s) of the unit. However, this requirement of approval is not necessary if email is sent to sender’s own unit.

Use blind carbon copy (Bcc)

Put mass email recipient addresses in the Bcc field instead of the To field. It is because when a recipient replies to a mass email, they may intentionally or unintentionally use the Reply to All option, which will result in a second mass email and causes a nuisance to the recipients. It also overwhelms the system. Moreover, please avoid disclosing the email addresses to others.

Organizing Your Mailbox

Review mailbox regularly

The large mailbox will take longer to load or to search emails. It is recommended to review your mailbox regularly, move emails to folder manually or by mail rule, and delete the unwanted emails as soon as they arrive or read. By default, emails which are older than 1 year are be moved to archive mailbox. You may also archive emails manually.

Empty Deleted Items folder

When you delete an email, it is moved to the “Deleted Items” folder. You need to empty the “Deleted Items” folder to permanently delete the emails.

Set out of office (Auto-reply)

If you are on leave, it is advisable to activate out-of-office function. The content of the auto-reply message must specify to whom the email should be forwarded to during the leave period.

For more information, please refer to ICTO Knowledge Base: