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Bearcat Online Guidelines and Useful Information
INTRODUCTION
YOUR ACCOUNT
USING BOL FEATURES
YOUR RESPONSIBILITY
GETTING HELP
SUMMARY
INTRODUCTION
Bearcat Online (BOL) is the approved University of Cincinnati student e-mail service. It is used for official university communications to students, such as:
- Registration procedures and deadline notifications
- Course withdrawal confirmations
- Financial aid requirements and awards
- Billing notices and due dates
- Emergency (e.g., snow closing) notices
- Information about programs, activities, sporting events - and more
The Student E-mail Policy (PDF) provides an overview of the university's directive regarding Bearcat Online as a comprehensive electronic student communication vehicle.
The University of Cincinnati Office of Information Technologies (UCit) has developed guidelines as part of the deployment of the Bearcat Online e-mail system. The primary intent of these guidelines is to insure system stability, availability, and continued functionality for all users. Bearcat Online is an Internet-based e-mail system that provides anti-spam, anti-virus, auto-reply, calendar, user-defined filter, forward, IMAP, POP, and Web Mail services.
The system is free to students, faculty, and staff of the University of Cincinnati. Users who wish to download mail onto their workstations and work off-line will find this system suitable for the majority of their needs. The centralized messaging system allows for state-of-the-art messaging, retention, and delivery; but to retain this high-level of service, messaging guidelines are necessary. We must assure adequate service for the number of accounts managed on the system.
UCit recommends that all users review the enclosed material and abide by the stated guidelines. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this, please feel free to contact the UCit Help Desk at 556-HELP (4357) or at helpdesk@uc.edu.
YOUR ACCOUNT
Account Initiation and Access
All students and faculty are pre-issued Bearcat Online accounts. Accounts are initiated for students when they attend student orientation or when they first register for classes, whichever comes first.
Web access to your Bearcat Online e-mail account is available at http://email.uc.edu/ .You can determine your username and default password by entering requested personal information at the E-Mail Services account verification Web site.
Passwords: Secure and Private It is the responsibility of each user to change the password upon first use of an account. The default password for Bearcat Online is set at your full birth date (MMDDYYYY). Passwords are case sensitive and should be a minimum of eight (8) characters in length, with no special characters.
To protect the privacy of an individual's e-mail account, the UCit Help Desk cannot change a password from a phone or e-mail request. If you have used your Bearcat Online account and changed your password from the default, if you forget your password, to have it reset you will need to show a valid picture ID at one of the following locations:
Main Campus
- UCit IRIT Help Desk, 630 Student Life Center
- UCit Help Desk, 400 University Hall
College of Medicine
- AIT&L IT Help Desk, E680 MSB SERV
Raymond Walters College
Clermont College
- Room 9 Peter Jones Building (PETE)
Distance Learning
- Distance Learning students will need to contact the UCit Help Desk at
556-HELP (4357) for password support. (You must call from the phone number on your student record.)
Message Quotas
Each student account is allocated fifty (50) megabytes of disk space on the server. A full-time faculty or staff account is allocated 100 megabytes of disk space on the server.
Why can't the university support e-mail with similar storage capacity as commercial e-mail services, such as AOL, Yahoo, or Hotmail? The University of Cincinnati does not provide equivalent amounts of storage capacity as the public e-mail providers because of the cost of providing such a service.
Public providers sell advertising to support the capacity levels they provide and use part of that revenue to support the service. Their business model assumes that the more capacity they provide, the more subscribers they will have, thus the more attractive they are to advertisers.
The university provides a high quality, reliable student e-mail service that is intended to support the business and operation of the university. Since ultimately it is the students that must pay for this service, it is approached in the most efficient and economical manner possible. In this case, this means that we limit the amount of available space to what has proven to be a reasonable level to support the average student's needs.
Account Review and Removal
On a quarterly basis, we examine Bearcat Online accounts for possible deactivation. If a student has not registered for courses for any of the last four quarters or a faculty member has not taught a class for two years, we send a memo letting the user know that his or her account is on the purge list. UCit provides a web site link, where the user can request keeping the account active. In most cases, we are able to grant these requests.
USING BOL FEATURES
Blind Carbon Copy Feature (Privacy)
The Bearcat Online system allows for the functionality of Blind Copies on messages. Blind Copies allow a sender to direct copies of a message to other users without the primary recipients' knowledge. The University of Cincinnati Information Technologies department (UCit) recommends that users employ this feature with due discretion.
Auto Forwarding
The BOL system supports auto-forwarding to a preferred e-mail account. That is, you can have messages addressed to your BOL account automatically sent (forwarded) to another e-mail address of your choice. However, there are certain risks associated with doing this.
- It is your responsibility to assure that your chosen e-mail account is working; the university cannot be held responsible for e-mail that was not accepted by the chosen e-mail service.
- It is your responsibility to be certain that messages from the university are not considered spam or junk mail in your chosen e-mail account. Be sure to check your junk mail folder periodically. Check your junk mail settings if you notice university messages are being flagged as junk mail.
- There are certain communications, known as bulletins, which cannot be forwarded. Bulletins communicate school closings, UC computer system virus notices, and university public announcements. Please continue to check your BOL account to retrieve these bulletins if you choose to have your e-mail forwarded to a public e-mail service.
BOL Backup/Recovery
BOL does not provide for single mailbox recovery. BOL is client server based messaging system, which uses single message instance in a database storage environment. All messages for all users are stored within a single database, which is backed up on nightly basis. Backups of the BOL system are performed exclusively for disaster recovery purposes in the event that we need to rebuild the system. Database backups are kept for seven (7) days before the tapes are recycled and the contents are overwritten.
BOL backups are not incremental, but are snapshots of the messaging database at the time of the backup cycle. Mail that is taken off the server via use of the POP protocol or deletion of messages will not be included in the backup, since the messages have been removed from the system prior to the backup activation.
Messaging Clients
UCit provides information on software that is available to use as messaging clients for your BOL e-mail account. Please see the software pages for the latest information.
YOUR RESPONSIBILITY
Checking Your BOL E-Mail Account Each user is responsible for regularly checking his or her e-mail account for official university communications, such as registration information, billing information, and instructors' communications.
The Student E-mail Policy (PDF) provides the following guidance, "The university suggests that students access their Bearcat Online e-mail accounts daily, or at a minimum, three times a week."
Account Privacy It is the responsibility of each user to safeguard his or her e-mail account.
- Never share your password with another individual. Your e-mail account is for your eyes only.
- UCit recommends that users change their passwords every 180 days to insure account security.
- Develop a strong password by following these guidelines:
- Make your password at least seven characters, where possible.
- Develop a mnemonic (i.e., use the first letter of every word from a simple phrase or sentence).
- Add numbers and special characters such as @, !, &,*.
- Alternate between upper and lower case letters.
- Use a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters.
- Make your password something not found in a dictionary.
- Do not use all numbers or letters.
- Do not use personal information that someone could easily guess or discover.
- Do not use the name of a sports team.
- If you must write down your password, do not leave the paper unsecured.
Mailbox Cleanup Each user is responsbile for reviewing his or her message directories and performing periodic clean-up.
The following methods can be used for managing large volumes of e-mail or attachments or both:
- Install and use the Eudora client. This will enable you to download the messages to your local PC and remove them from the server.
- Store large attachments on your local PC and remove them from the e-mail messages, and thus, from the server.
- Be sure you regularly empty your e-mail trash.
Note: Reaching the maximum quota inhibits both the sending and the receiving of messages. Not managing your account means you may miss important messages.
Mail Content (Legal/Ethics) It is the responsibility of each user to abide by the University's General Policy on the Use of Information Technology.
Account Maintenance Requests It is the responsibility of each BOL user to send any e-mail account maintenance requests to TECHNICIAN@UC.EDU via e-mail.
Information required for processing is name, phone number, birth date (MMDD), university username, and student or employee ID. This electronic form is kept for documentation purposes. Account maintenance requests will be processed on a first-come, first-served basis.
Name change requests: A name change request is actually a request for a new account under a different name. Such a request must be sent by the individual who owns the account and must be sent from the account for which the user wants the name change.
- Make a request for an official name change with the university. A student must have the Registrar's Office change the name on the official student record or an employee must have the Human Resources department change the name on the employee record.
- Send the request for an e-mail account change to TECHNICIAN@UC.EDU.
- A new account will be activated and the user will be notified.
- The user is responsible for transferring the mail from the old account to the new account or to a client on his or her workstation.
- The old account will remain open for two weeks before deletion.
Account deletion requests
If a student has registered in the last five quarters, automated processes will insure that an account exists for him or her.
Please send non-student requests to TECHNICIAN@UC.EDU.
Viruses, Worms, and Trojan Horses It is the responsibility of each computer user to protect any PC with access to the university's network from virus infection.
Viruses are computer programs designed to cause trouble to your computer. Worms are programs that replicate themselves and look for holes in networks or send themselves via e-mail to cause trouble. Trojan horses are programs that carry hidden, malicious programs. To protect your PC:
- Do not open e-mail files from anyone you do not know.
- Use extreme caution opening e-mail attachments containing executable files. Some file extensions to avoid include: EXE, .COM, .CMD, .PIF, .SCR, BAT, and .VBS.
- Keep your desktop anti-virus software up-to-date. Information on the university's supported virus protection software is available at the McAfee Anti-Virus Software Web site.
Current information about the latest virus outbreaks are available at http://www.ucit.uc.edu/helpdesk/virus.asp.
Additional information on virus management and protecting your computer can be found at the following links:
Spam Management
UCit has implemented several mechanisms for managing spam, and each computer user must take steps to safeguard against increasing the amount of spam that comes into the university. A thorough review of Keeping Spam out of Your E-Mail will help you understand spam and how you can help control it.
GETTING HELP
Available Resources for Help
- Information about the specific use of BOL functions is available by using the online Help function (available in the Webmail Direct BOL) and in the following online documentation:
- UCit will support POP clients, such as Eudora, to their full functionality.
- Support for individual e-mail problems is provided by the UCit Help Desk by calling 556-HELP (4357) or sending e-mail to userhelp@email.uc.edu.
SUMMARY
The messaging procedures and practices stipulated in this document have been implemented for the continued overall functionality and security for all users concerned. These procedures and practices will be reviewed periodically and are subject to change. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact the UCit Help Desk by phone at 556-HELP (4357) or by e-mail at userhelp@uc.edu.
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