Remove Auto-forwarding of Stanford email

Overview

To prevent Stanford Medicine confidential data from being outside of Stanford Medicine’s security controls, School of Medicine policy will restrict auto-forwarding of @stanford.edu email by individuals who attest Yes to AMIE that they may access or receive High Risk data. After November 17, these email accounts will be technically prevented from automatically forwarding outside of Stanford Medicine.

Why is this necessary?

Automatic mail forwarding eliminates the opportunity for you to determine whether it is appropriate for a received message to go to the forwarding address. You also do not have control over who sends you mail and if a message does have sensitive data, automatically forwarding the message could pose a security risk. In the event of a breach or other compromise of the data on a non-Stanford mail system, Stanford has no access or controls in place to protect your mail.

How Do I Remove My Auto-Forwarding?

First, identify the current configuration:

From Accounts.Stanford.EDU, select Manage
Select the tab on the next page for Email
The option for Forward email should list beneath it the address to which your email is being delivered.

If this shows a non-Stanford address, please proceed with the instructions below for Stanford Accounts

If this shows only your @stanford.edu mailbox, please review the Webmail Auto-Forwarding and Custom Rules below.

If auto-forwarding is configured in your local mail application, please remove it from within the application.

Stanford Accounts page

From the web page Accounts.Stanford.EDU, select Manage
Select tab for Email
There should be a description under the button that says Forward email that lists the address to which you are auto-forwarding
Select option to Forward email
The Email Forwarding page should reflect the address to which you are automatically forwarding.
1. Select the checkbox that says "your @stanford mailbox"
2. Remove the address(es) from Email 1, Email 2, Email 3
3. select Save at the bottom
A brief message should pop up: "Settings successfully updated."

Stanford Webmail Auto-Forwarding

In Webmail, select the Settings icon in the top menu bar
At the bottom of the panel that opens, select View all Outlook settings at the bottom
On the next pop-up page, in the column of settings next to Mail, select Forwarding
Uncheck the box that says "Enable forwarding"
Click the Save button at the bottom

Stanford Webmail Custom Rules

To check for specific rules for auto-forwarding (rather than auto-forwarding everything by default), in Webmail:

In Webmail, select the Settings icon in the top menu bar
At the bottom of the panel that opens, select View all Outlook settings
On the next pop-up page, in the column of settings next to Mail, select Rules (it you've added many rules, it may take a while)
Review the rules to see if any automatically send your email to a non-Stanford site (based on specific conditions for the message). If you have auto-forwarding rules for your account, please delete them by clicking on the trash can icon. Click OK when asked if you are sure you want to delete this rule.
Close the window using the X in the upper right hand corner.

FAQs

I can't seem to find an auto-forward set up in Accounts or in Webmail

The three options above are the most likely places to enable auto-forwarding, but

• You may have configured a secondary address in your StanfordYou profile
1 From StanfordYou.stanford.edu, select Maintain your directory and AlertSU emergency contact information
2 In the section SU contact info, if a non-Stanford email is shown, select the option to change... and remove the non-Stanford address.

• If your local mail application has allowed you to set up Filtering Rules or Policies so that your messages all get forwarded elsewhere, you'll need to update that information to ensure it is not being routed to a non-Stanford address.

I never send PHI without using Secure: mail

Auto-forwarding and Secure: email are two different tools. Auto-forwarding bypasses the controls in Secure: mail.

The auto-forwarding risk is that messages sent to you by others are automatically sent to another mail service which may not be protected by Stanford. You may not expect or plan to have regulated or sensitive data received from another person but only the other person controls their mail.

Auto-forwarding does not provide you with the opportunity to add Secure: in the Subject as you may when you are intentionally sending sensitive data. The controls applied when you manually forward a message with Secure: in the Subject are not applied in an automatically forwarded message.

What if I don't access PHI?

If you need assistance, contact the TDS Service Desk:

Call 650-725-8000 Monday – Friday, 7:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Submit a ticket (https://stanford.service-now.com/services/?id=get_help)

Schedule an in-person appointment at https://tdstechbar.stanford.edu, Monday–Friday, 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

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