We receive (automated) complaints from external email providers about undesired emails on a regular basis.

The email providers forward these mails to us with the remark that a mail that was either forwarded or sent via the University servers has been markt as undesired ("spam") by the owner of the mailbox.

While we do follow up on complaints regarding genuine spam the automated systems of other email providers will in some cases identify the university as originator of undesired mails even if it only serverd as a transit station. This has a negative effect on the entire email traffic of the university. In the worst case this can lead to private email address becoming unreachable from within the university.

We especially want to keep up the automatic forwarding to private mailboxes as a comfort feature for our students. To make this possible, the resulting negative impact on the infrastructure of the university must not become disproportionate. For this reason we ask you to be mindful when handling the spam filter function.

I have received an undesired email from the systems of CAU

Please do not mark emails that you receive from the university into your private mailbox as spam. In the worst case this can lead to even important emails from the university to no longer being delivered to you.

For reasons of data protection it is unfortunately unavoidable for you to receive mails from central mailing lists of CAU that might not be of interest to you. We ask you to refrain from marking these emails as spam as well, but instead to just delete them or to automatically filter them with the tools of your email provider.

The central mailing lists of CAU are subject to strict conditions regarding the dispatch of emails and will only be used for important information from the university.

From most of the otther mailing lists of CAU you can unsubscribe with the respective link contained in the emails. Please contact the sender of an email you wish to longer receive from a list should this link be missing so you can be taken off of the list.

a spam email was forwarded to me through my CAU address

By the forwarding mechanism you can receive genuine spam emails through your university address. Email providers will often not take into account that the CAU only serves as a middle man in this case. If you mark such an email as spam you complain about the university instead of the actual sender when it comes to your email provider.

To avoid undesired forwarding the university offers the option to configure automatic filter rules.