Getting Started With BC Email

• Getting an email account at BC
• About your BC email address
• Email usage guidelines 
• Suppressing your email address from publication
• What happens to my email when I leave BC?

Getting an email account at BC

Boston College provides email services for all affiliated students, faculty, and staff (including part-time and visiting faculty and staff). These email services require a BC username and password.

New students:

New students: You receive a letter containing your BC username and password as soon as you are formally transferred to 'student' status. If you lost or did not receive the letter containing this information, visit the Walk-In Help Desk in O'Neill 248 or contact the Help Center at help.center@bc.edu or 617-552-HELP(4357).

Faculty and Staff: You receive a letter containing your BC username and password from your department. If you lost or did not receive the letter containing this information, contact your Technology Consultant (TC): www.bc.edu/tc

About your BC email address

Your email address at Boston College has two forms:

• "friendly" - firstname.lastname.#@bc.edu
• "short" - username@bc.edu

"Friendly" email address

Your "friendly" address is firstname.lastname.#@bc.edu. If your full name is not unique at BC, you must use the appropriate number after your name (for example, John.Doe.3@bc.edu). To learn what your number is, check the Electronic Communications Directory and search for your name to find your directory record and to confirm your "friendly address."

Note: If you are the first or only person with that name, and you have a 1 after your name, you do not need to use the number 1 in the address. If another person with the same name is added to the system in the future, this new person will be assigned firstname.lastname.2@bc.edu.

"Short" email address

Your "short address" is username@bc.edu. Your "short address" is unique within Boston College. Learn more about your BC username.

Important: Boston College recommends that you keep the short version of your address private and only use it to log into your BC accounts. Give people the "friendly" version of your email address instead. If you make the short version public, your BC accounts may be somewhat more vulnerable to hackers.

About message size limits at BC

Boston College limits the size of email messages to 15MB. This includes both the text of the email message and any attachments. Please be aware that the recipient of your message may have a lower limit.

How will I know if the message is too large?

Most email clients will alert you that the message exceeds the size limit. BC WebMail will display a more generic message indicating that the connection was interrupted or that the page could not be displayed. Sometimes the message is retained in your outbox; if you can successfully send other messages, the message in your outbox may be over the size limit.

Options for sharing large attachments:

If you need to send a large document as an attachment, you can:

1. Try compressing the file(s) first so that the size is within the limit. Learn more about file compression.
2. Share the documents through your MyFiles@bc account. This is also the best way to forward confidential material. Learn more about sharing files through MyFiles.  

Email usage guidelines

The following are guidelines for email use at Boston College:

• Pyramid schemes are illegal. Do not participate in them. A pyramid scheme is any process whereby you are asked to send money to names on a list and then you put your name on that list and mail it to several people, hoping those people will send you money.
• Do not participate in email chain letters. A chain letter is any letter which asks to be forwarded to other people, even if it is a for a good cause. This is prohibited at Boston College and frowned upon by the Internet Society. It causes unnecessary network traffic, wasted disk space, and slows email delivery for everyone.
• Do not send large attachments. They slow the network down, waste disk space, and sometimes can prevent someone's Inbox from opening correctly because the email software runs out of memory.
• Do not spam other users by sending unsolicited junk mail. Do not spam newsgroups by posting messages which are not on the topic of the newsgroup or intended only to incite a flame war.
• Do not send messages to large distribution lists without careful planning and only when absolutely necessary. Divide your lists into smaller groups (less than 100) so as not to overload the outgoing email server. If you overwhelm the email server, everyone's mail will be delayed, including your own. Email should only be used to communicate with the entire campus during extreme/emergency situations.
• Do not send email under names other than your own. Known as spoofing, this is against the policies at Boston College and you will be subject to serious disciplinary actions as a result.
• Please remember at all times that you are communicating with another person at the other end of the email, not a machine. Use civil language and re-read your messages before you send to check for possible misunderstandings.

Reporting email abuse

If you receive improper messages like the ones described above, learn how to report email abuse.

Important reminder: Any person who engages in any kind of computer or systems misuse as described in the University Policies and Procedures Manual and the Student Guide may be subject to disciplinary action, including the loss of computer privileges and/or dismissal from the University, and to criminal prosecution under the applicable state and/or federal laws.

Suppressing your email address from publication

You can control whether your email address is published within the Boston College community and/or to the public at large. To suppress your email address from publication:

1. Log in to Agora Portal
2. Under the My Services tab, click Privacy Preferences.
3. A table of current privacy settings for your account appears. At the bottom of the page, click Update Privacy Preferences.
   Important: Be sure to read the information about changing your email address availability before making changes.
4. On the Update Privacy Preferences page, make any desired changes, then submit them by entering your password and clicking Update preferences at the bottom of the page.