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University of Reading

Staff email migration: scam email update

Tuesday, 20 March 2018

Office 365 email migration

Don’t forget that staff emails will begin migrating over to Office 365 over the weekend of 23, 24 and 25 March (Friday evening to Sunday).

Beware spoof emails

If you receive an email asking you to take action before the migration begins (i.e. verifying an account, clicking on a link, or providing username and password details) please check these emails carefully.

Some colleagues may have received spam emails pretending to be sent from a member of University staff, which include links to ‘upgrade’ your account (a screenshot of the full email is available for reference). These requests are not legitimate – IT will not ask you to take any action before the migration, so please do not click on any links or supply any information to these requests.  

IT will be controlling the migration and will not ask you to do anything in advance. They will never ask for your password, so be cautious of any email asking you to do so. 

Other factors that could indicate a spam message:     

  • Look for typos in emails that are sent
  • Always check the link by holding your mouse pointer over it, please do not click on this (see image on the right or click to enlarge). Check that the link is an official University of Reading link. 
  • If you receive an email you are unsure about, please contact IT.  

For the duration of this project, IT will publish legitimate emails on the IT blog, which can also be accessed through the IT homepage.

The migration

Following the migration, all emails will be stored in Office 365 (on Microsoft servers), instead of University managed servers.

If you use Outlook on Windows and macOS, you will be prompted to restart the application once your email has migrated.

If you use a mobile phone or tablet to access your email, we recommend downloading the Outlook app. Other mail clients, e.g. those using IMAP, will also work with Office 365.

The storage on each user account will be increased to 50GB and there will be improvements to spam filtering.

Office 365 allows for integration between your email and other Office 365 products and services like OneDrive for Business.

Further information about the migration is available on the IT Staff Email page. If you have any queries about the migration, please contact IT for assistance.