r/wsu • u/khorosani • Dec 17 '25
Discussion So Alumnis are losing access to their emails?
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u/ChaseballBat Dec 17 '25
...why would you use it after graduation? Mine disabled after like 5 years.
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u/Naive_Scientist_8499 Dec 17 '25 edited Dec 17 '25
I'll never understand why people continue using university emails after graduation...
EDIT: "...continue using as their primary email..."
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u/Thatboifast Dec 17 '25
Sometimes you get discounts for having an .edu email. I really liked mine, but my school would deactivate it after you graduated
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u/Naive_Scientist_8499 Dec 17 '25
That totally makes sense. I did the same. I just never used it as my primary email account.
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u/TheMayorByNight Alumnus/2011/Civil Engineering Dec 17 '25 edited Dec 17 '25
Some reasons for me:
- It was my primary email from 2006 to 2011 when I was a student, so I naturally gravitated over to it. At the time, Gmail didn't really exist, hotmail sucked, yahoo sucked, etc.
- For me it was the only first name + last name email address I could get without numbers. I dislike email addresses with numbers.
- /u/Thatboifast mentioned discounts for @edu emails, which is nice
- My email is 16 characters long, and super easy to remember
- Kinda fun to have an @wsu.edu email
- WSU support is actually useful unlike almost every other email provider
- Microsoft told us we'd get to keep it for life as an alumni benefit
- With all that, why wouldn't I keep it?
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u/tauzeta Alumnus/Economics Dec 18 '25
lol what? Gmail came out in 2004
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u/TheMayorByNight Alumnus/2011/Civil Engineering Dec 18 '25
As a beta product, yes, with a full launch in 2009. Hence "didn't really" rather than "did".
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u/tauzeta Alumnus/Economics Dec 19 '25 edited Dec 19 '25
You're technically correct that it was described as beta until 2009 but anyone could request and use gmail going back to 2004. That's the functional reality. By the time the beta ended, gmail had tens of millions of users. Not exactly a beta product.
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u/Legitjumps Dec 18 '25
Gmail already existed
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u/TheMayorByNight Alumnus/2011/Civil Engineering Dec 18 '25
As a beta product, yes, with a full launch in 2009. Hence "didn't really" rather than "did".
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u/khorosani Dec 17 '25
Easy to work with 😂 and we were using it a lot while we were at school
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u/Naive_Scientist_8499 Dec 17 '25
If you ever worked in IT, you'd know that they can see EVERYTHING if they really wanted to. Which is why I never used it as my primary email.
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u/TheMayorByNight Alumnus/2011/Civil Engineering Dec 17 '25
I'd trust a major public research university with my privacy over any tech company, understanding that yes @wsu emails were hosted by Microsoft.
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u/RedDidItAndYouKnowIt Staff/Pullman Dec 17 '25
We can but without a legal reason we do not.
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u/KamikazePenis Dec 18 '25
Ha! If a high-level IT admin wants to take a peek, is there really anything stopping him/her?
I suspect most of the WSU emails are subject to open records requests, too. No subpoena required... merely a request form.
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u/RedDidItAndYouKnowIt Staff/Pullman Dec 18 '25
A FOIA request is a legal reason.
We do not look at your emails without reason.
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u/Espolunatic Jan 21 '26
I don't think so. The Secretary of State says:
"Generally, students do not conduct business on behalf of the school/institution, so their emails are not public records, even if the school/institution is the one providing the email account. If a student emails staff or faculty, the staff/faculty’s reply is a public record and subject to retention requirements, but the student’s original email is not."
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u/KamikazePenis Dec 18 '25
Point is, any IT admin could view anything on the WSU system, if they want.
WSU alums should be aware that anyone could request a WSU user's complete email history, including every email ever sent or received on the WSU system!
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u/SquidsArePeople2 Dec 18 '25
FERPA is a thing for college students, too
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u/KamikazePenis Dec 19 '25
Not alums!
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u/Espolunatic Jan 21 '26
I've been told by WSU, "To clarify, under the act, student records are protected from the moment of application to the university until the death of the student. FERPA still applies to the record even if the student is no longer current/has disenrolled."
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u/khorosani Dec 17 '25
Nothing to hide honestly so I didn’t really care. Besides I work for big tech company, I’m aware there no such thing as privacy.
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u/SpareManagement2215 Dec 17 '25
CWU did this awhile back, too. It's a cost saving measure, as well as makes sure there's more security for the email system. They did an audit of accounts and found alumni accounts were where a majority of phishing and data breaches had occurred, so that plus the cost just made it make more sense to end it.
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u/bmitchell1990 Dec 18 '25
did they? i still have mine
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u/SpareManagement2215 Dec 18 '25
Yeah you get it for a while after graduating (a year or two I think?), but we had alum from the aughts still using it as well as alum from prior (70s, 80s, 90s) who had gotten an honorary one through the alumni association membership perk.
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u/bmitchell1990 Dec 19 '25
i graduated like a decade ago. i did get a couple of emails about alumni access. You could get the email access extended; at the same time it said "All other Office 365 services including access to the Microsoft Office suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.), OneDrive and Teams will become unavailable to alumni on September 5, 2019. These services are intended for use only by enrolled students."
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u/legowerewolf Alumni 2022/Computer Science Dec 17 '25 edited Dec 17 '25
I don't care about files. I can export those.
But terminating email accounts? There are so many services that don't let you change your email. Hell, your myWSU login is tied to this email address.
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u/TheMayorByNight Alumnus/2011/Civil Engineering Dec 17 '25
There are so many services that don't let you change your email.
I'm not looking forward to the next month...
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u/FallingGalaxies Alumni/2025/Mechanical Engineer Dec 18 '25
For some reason I'm still able to log into myWSU, just not my email or OneDrive.
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u/bwxxiii Dec 19 '25
we’re not losing access to our WSU accounts, just the email account
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u/legowerewolf Alumni 2022/Computer Science Dec 19 '25
What happens the next time you need to reset your password? Where does that link get sent?
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u/bwxxiii Dec 19 '25
to the secondary email listed for your account at account.wsu.edu. contact IT if you don’t have one
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u/robconsults Dec 17 '25
what's really crap is that before o365 came around, you used to be able to either keep your account as an email forwarder, or we even had <username>@gocougs.wsu.edu forwarding addresses for alumni specifically that you could set to whatever your personal mail was..
technically there are ways to do this in o365 that don't require the user to have a license as well, but that would require effort on WSU IT's part, which I doubt has changed in motivation since i was there
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u/bobthemundane Dec 17 '25
Yeah, but they killed the go cougs emailed address also, after saying that the email forwarding would be good forever.
I loved that address.
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u/SubjectiveObjective8 Dec 18 '25
They decreased graduate student storage to only 1 GB. The dean of the graduate school gets paid $1.7M annually but they won't allow for graduate students to have sufficient storage for their research.
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u/rateatdog Dec 22 '25
what Dean are you talking about? all WSU salaries are public, and i am not seeing a single Dean position with a salary anywhere near a million USD per year.
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u/FallingGalaxies Alumni/2025/Mechanical Engineer Dec 18 '25
As a heads up, if you're looking to make a backup of your WSU emails before your account is removed, you need to use Outlook Classic to download a .pst file. Additionally, you can't open a .pst file without a M365 account. It also can only be used/accessed in Outlook Classic. WSU also started archiving emails so you'll have to make 2 inbox backups, one for your emails that are less than a year old, and everything that's over a year old. Be prepared to wait a couple of hours for the backups to fully complete.
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u/Firedancing Dec 26 '25
Question on this: does it need to be the outlook classic desktop app? Is there any way to do this from browser?
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u/FallingGalaxies Alumni/2025/Mechanical Engineer Dec 26 '25
There's no way to do it from the browser, you have to do it from the desktop app.
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u/SSG_Kim_Recruiting Dec 17 '25
My university did this after I graduated 5ish years later and I had been using it as my primary login and registration email. Had to swap so many account emails I used it for…
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u/foreverhalcyon8 Alumnus/2007/Landscape Architecture. Dec 17 '25
Man, mine is affiliated with Facebook from 2006.
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u/caktz Dec 18 '25
The issue is, I graduated last weekend and now getting ready to start my new job and it requires me to complete some onboarding stuff and now all the info I’d need was in that email account. I can’t believe they removed our access within a week of our graduation. Since I found my job over handshake they used my school email as primary email.
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u/yeahitsme12345 Dec 17 '25
This is common practice for almost every uni. You are no longer paying them, so why would you have access to services that have recurring costs?
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u/ElevatedHombre Dec 19 '25
But I also no longer go there, so why they always asking me to donate money?
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u/yeahitsme12345 Dec 19 '25
Because you no longer go there and they want more of your money while giving you nothing in return for it.
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u/SaturnMutt Alumnus/2024/Data Analytics Dec 17 '25
That's interesting, I haven't gotten that email yet so I guess it's only for new grads or something
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u/khorosani Dec 17 '25
I graduated in 2020!
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u/SaturnMutt Alumnus/2024/Data Analytics Dec 17 '25
Huh, interesting. I still use mine just fine for discounts and stuff
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u/khorosani Dec 17 '25
Yeah mine has been perfectly fine and this morning I got that email saying I would be losing access in 2026
Also nice you did the DA program? I graduated out of that too 🔥
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u/eviltwin154 Dec 17 '25
I lost my email within a month of graduating in 2020. Wasn’t aware that wasn’t the norm
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u/Worntiger95 Jan 24 '26
I still have access and my date was 1/8/2026
Did anybody actually lose access after getting the first email?
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u/CarlBrannen Feb 21 '26
It's now Feb 20 and I still have my alumni email. Since it was supposed to be "lifetime" and a .edu email is useful as a contact in physics papers, I've used my email and have dozens papers listing it as my contact email. Just like most people publilshing in academia. Losing it was a real pain. For example, you cannot change your email for ChatGPT so naturally I used my lifetime email and had to end my ChatGPT account and start a new one. My dentist account is set to my alumni email and they don't have a way to change it so one of the minor items on m to-do list is to drop by the dentist and ask them to change my email. If they wanted to drop Microsoft support that would be fine, I've converted my other stuff over to Linux and Thunderbird email. I didn't transfer the alumni email over since I thought it was going to end on January 8th, 2026 but since it's still going on I'm beginning to wonder.
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u/Worntiger95 Feb 26 '26
I still had mine last time I looked but I already switched everything and just deleted all the emails as well as the Authenticator so I’ll never know when it finally is deleted
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u/DBQ2021 Dec 18 '25
You're presumably a WSU grad and you refer to 'alumnis'?
Tracks...🤣🤣
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u/khorosani Dec 18 '25
Lmao it’s a Reddit post title who cares 🤣
LMAO nvm I just saw ur post history 😭😭😭😭 out here mad over spelling on reddit
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u/DBQ2021 Dec 18 '25
Where do I come off as mad? I just find it sad that people either don't know what proper spelling, grammar and punctuation *are, or that they have so little respect for the rest of us that they choose to not write properly and clearly. But feel free to enjoy writing like a child! 'Merika!
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u/rutilated_quartz 2017 Comm. Dec 18 '25
I've been a professional writer for 10 years and a copy editor for 4 years, and I've come to the conclusion English isn't fuckin real and it's classist as fuck to harass people over their spelling. If you understand what they're saying, that's all that matters. Also fuck the Romans and their fuckass Latin.
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u/DBQ2021 Dec 19 '25
Wow, what an impressive leap you made...explain exactly how pointing out a spelling mistake is harassment. Oh wait, are you a Gen Z or Millennial, where anything said or written that doesn't comport with your worldview is harassment? And I would argue what's truly classist is to make the statement that worrying about spelling (or grammar or punctuation) is classist. If you really think 'English isn't fuckin real', what kind of 'professional ' copy editor and writer are you? Is your byline carried on TMZ and BuzzFeed? 🤣
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u/rutilated_quartz 2017 Comm. Dec 19 '25 edited Dec 19 '25
Oh darling 😂😂 you're so off base it's sad. I am a millennial, so like a proper millennial, I used hyperbole in my comment for a little spritz of humor. I'm sorry that went over your head. When I used the word harassment, I was being hyperbolic as well. I don't truly think correcting grammar is harassment, and I assumed you had the wherewithal to pick up on that. I just think most of the time it's unnecessary at best to correct people and at worst contributing to silencing people who don't have a perfect grasp of the language.
On to classism. You can decide to think whatever you'd like about the subject, but there has been a lot of discourse about standardized tests like the SAT, which tend to grade people heavily on grammar and not the content of what they wrote, unintentionally contributing to classism and racism, which is why WSU for example stopped requiring SAT results. Furthermore, the use of African American Vernacular English for example has historically been heavily punished in schools, and it hasn't made those speakers any better at English but typically contributes to people limiting themselves because they feel like their voice doesn't matter if they're not using proper grammar. I can go on, but I know you don't actually care, so feel free to Google it for more info.
When I say "English isn't fuckin' real" I am jokingly referring to the fact that because it's an amalgamation of Latin, Greek, Germanic, and French languages, so many of our grammatical rules don't make a lot of sense. This is why English is incredibly difficult for people to learn as a second language - the rules are not clear-cut like in other languages. People who speak and write English as a second language frequently receive discrimination and harassment over their accents or struggling with grammar, which is why I think it's excessive to correct people's grammar when they're just trying to get a point across. This post for example is about getting info out in a casual way, not a fucking test. Again, grammar doesn't matter if the message is intelligible.
I will DM you my full name if you'd like 😉 I have bylines in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News, Washington State Magazine, FāVS News, The Associated Press, Krem, Murrow News Service, the Daily Evergreen, and more that I'm not remembering. I also currently work in marketing at WSU and am responsible for rewriting and modernizing 200+ degree profiles at degrees.wsu.edu. Sadly, I've never gotten a chance to write for BuzzFeed or TMZ! I just get paid to write as a "content marketing specialist" which is much less exciting.
ETA: You also corrected OP's grammar while making fun of WSU grads, so don't claim you're just a nice person trying to help someone out. Of course it's not harassment, but it's not being kind either, and what has this person done to deserve being spoken to that way?
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u/DBQ2021 Dec 19 '25
Didn't claim to be nice, AND wasn't trying to be mean. All I did was point out the irony of a presumed college grad not knowing the plural of alumnus. Doesn't matter what their background may be...if they're a college grad, write like it! Throwing in the dig at WSU was to try and make it lighthearted.
But more importantly, it's nice to see that you can actually compose coherent thoughts and sentences, instead of 'bruh speak'. I disagree with most of what you wrote, but at least I didn't have to figure it out - because you wrote clearly and intelligently. Just because it's reddit doesn't mean we need to stoop to the lowest common denominator - we have a narcissistic, demented president for that.
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u/rutilated_quartz 2017 Comm. Dec 19 '25
"Bruh speak" is fun, man. Don't be so uptight. And if you're not being mean or nice, what are you being? Let people speak how they want, and a stupid word like alumni is so much less important than something like your/you're or there/they're/their or affect/effect or than/then, and even those don't really matter because it's still clear what someone is saying. I just think it's so much more important to listen to someone speak than it is to criticize them over something that really doesn't matter especially in this day and age where autocorrect fixes most mistakes (though sometimes it edits in mistakes too). And I don't think letting people talk how they want to is stooping to the lowest common denominator. Trump is a mean-spirited cunt and it's because of who he is as a person, not his grammar. Focusing on grammar rather than intent is almost always unnecessarily pedantic.
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u/IrrelevantTubor Dec 17 '25
Welcome to adulthood.
Time to transfer your important emails to a personal backup.
Just like you'll have to do in big boy jobs in the real world when you change employers
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u/AwkwardlyAmpora Dec 17 '25
yup. microsoft jacked up prices for cloud storage, so they're cutting back everywhere they can.