Important changes to email archiving

It's no secret: without email, nothing works in everyday working life. Every year, ETH members alone send and receive millions of emails. The importance of "electronic letters" is immense. Common business practice in Switzerland therefore considers emails to be business-relevant documents, which makes them subject to the same retention obligations under the Swiss Code of Obligations (CO).

Emails in the mail archive

In order to meet the associated requirements, since 2003 all emails at ETH Zurich that are sent or received via ITS's central email service have been copied from the email server to a mail archive after 30 days. As required by law, they are stored there for at least ten years and can still be retrieved by the respective user even if they have already been deleted from their email account. Users can still view their emails in this archive, but can no longer modify or delete them.

Now, all users of ITS's central email service will be subject to changes to this email archiving system starting 5th of May 2022. Users of non-centrally provided email services will not be affected by these changes.

What will change?

The following changes will be made to email archiving in the coming months:

Emails will now only be archived after 60 days

Until now, all incoming and outgoing emails and calendar entries (including attachments) were automatically copied from the server to the mail archive after 30 days. This will now only be the case after 60 days.

Emails that are not sent or received via the ITS mail server, but instead via a decentralised mail server, will be excluded from storage in the mail archive. This is the case, for example, in the D-PHYS department and sometimes the D-ITET department.

Planned implementation: 5th of May 2022

Emails will be automatically deleted after ten years

Until now, emails in the mail archive were never deleted from it. In order to comply with the "right to be forgotten", all emails sent or received more than ten years ago will now be automatically deleted from the mail archive. However, emails sent less than ten years ago will remain stored in it.

Please note: These emails will be permanently deleted. Any emails deleted through this process cannot be restored.

Important: If you do not want your emails to be deleted from the mail archive, you can suspend this process with immediate effect. Your emails will then remain stored in the mail archive until you leave ETH Zurich, even if the emails are older than ten years. You can sign out of the deletion process via the IT Shop. Here's a guide to doing so.

Start of the deletion process: October 2022 onwards

Please note: Emails that are in your personal Outlook email account will not be affected by this deletion process. If you do not manually delete these emails yourself, they will remain in your Outlook account for more than ten years.

Special regulation for emails to/from students

A special regulation concerns the emails in mailboxes of ETH students: since September 2018, these have no longer been stored in the mail archive. This is because these communications are not considered to be business-relevant.

Student emails that were sent/received before September 2018 and are therefore still in the mail archive will now be deleted from it, unless these persons were also employees (e.g. doctoral students).

Planned implementation: from May 2022

Access to the mail archive

One important change that is already in effect concerns the way users can access the mail archive: until recently, access was possible directly via the internet. Since 1 November 2021, however, there has been an additional security barrier: access now requires prior, one-time registration via the ITS Service Desk. In addition, access is now only possible from the ETH network (VPN).

More information can be found on the project website. 

New folder for private emails

It is generally permitted to send or receive private emails via ETH email accounts. However, these private emails are currently also copied to the mail archive. ETH Zurich therefore recommends users not to use business email accounts for private purposes. Information on using the email/mailbox service can be found in the service documentation.

However, in order to give you the option to send and receive private emails without storing them in the mail archive, a "private-do-not-archive" folder is now provided within the email program. That means: emails that you move to this folder will not be stored in the mail archive. Please note that this folder is intended exclusively for private communication, not for the storage of business emails.

Planned implementation: From beginning of May 2022 onwards. You will be informed by email when this folder has been created for you.

What does this mean for you in concrete terms?

In short, in the following months, there are two changes in particular that will be important for you:

• Setting up the "private-do-not-archive" folder in your email account: ITS will send you an email to inform you when this folder will be set up. The folder will be set up automatically – you do not need to do anything. Please note: do not delete this folder. Its functionality cannot be restored by simply recreating the folder. This requires a ticket from the ITS Service Desk.
• Deleting emails older than ten years from the mail archive from October 2022: If you do not want all the emails in the mail archive that you sent or received more than ten years ago to be deleted from October onwards, you have until the end of September to opt out of this process via the IT Shop.
  
  
• Do you agree to the deletion of your emails from the mail archive that are more than ten years old? If so, you do not need to do anything else. However, please note: these emails will be permanently deleted from the mail archive. Any emails deleted through this process cannot be restored.

Background to the changes

The adjustments to the archiving process described here are necessary for the following reasons:

• Legal retention period exceeded: According to the CO, business-relevant documents (and thus also emails) must be stored for at least ten years. Since up to now at ETH, emails in the mail archive have never been deleted from it, this retention period has long exceeded the legal requirements.
• "Right to be forgotten": In order to take data protection and the "right to be forgotten" into account, it is customary to delete emails after the expiry of a ten-year retention period. That is, unless other reasons (e.g. requirements of the external page Swiss Archiving Act) demand longer storage. However, this only concerns a small part of all emails sent and received at ETH (e.g., emails from members of the Executive Board). For all other ETH members, there is no legal reason to retain emails for longer than ten years.
• Improving IT security: In order to better secure the mail archive and the emails it contains, the way ETH members can access it has been slightly adjusted.

Questions? Comments?

On the project website and in the FAQs, you will find the most important information about email archiving. Please contact the ITS Service Desk if you have any questions.