Your Cornell email account is connected to your status at Cornell as active faculty, student, alumni, or staff. If your connection with Cornell changes, for example by changing from student to alumni or from alumni to staff, your email might change. If your affiliation with Cornell ends, your email service may, too.

Avoid situations that would cause you to lose content or access to your accounts by following the guidelines below.

Use your Cornell email for:

Cornell Communications

Please use your Cornell email to communicate with professors, fellow students, and the university. Consider backing up personal contacts and important messages to a personal email address. For job applications, you can include your Cornell email as a secondary contact point, after your personal email address.

Don’t use your Cornell email for:

Conducting a Business

Cornell email and storage accounts are for Cornell teaching and learning, research, and business. Put contacts and messages that are important, need to be saved for a long period of time, or need to always be accessible to you, in a non-Cornell email address of yours.

Depending on your activities and relationship to Cornell, access to your Cornell email can be restricted, locked, or lost.

Mass Emailing

Sending a large number of emails can flag your account for spam, and your access will be restricted or locked. Use an e-list, or mailing alternative, when possible. 

Subscriptions

Any subscription that you have connected to your Cornell email will be inaccessible if you lose access to your Cornell email.

Banking and Other Vital Services or Accounts

Always connect banking and other vital services to email accounts that you will never lose access to under any circumstance. Your Cornell email is dependent on certain conditions being met, and you will lose access if they are not. Your bank sending messages to an email address you can’t get to is a very bad situation. Instead, link important accounts to a personal email that you have full control over, forever. 

Access to your Cornell email can be restricted, locked, or lost. If it is, any account that you’ve linked to it could then be inaccessible to you. 

Important Storage

Cornell provides Microsoft, Google, and Box storage options to faculty, students, and staff, and 5 GB of Google storage to alumni, a reduction from what they had as students. If you’re a student and want to maintain alumni email, reduce your storage when you graduate.

If access to your Cornell email is restricted, locked, or lost, any information you have saved in your Google Drive will no longer be accessible.

Google Apps

• If you have Google Photos access, it’s best not to use this storage at all. Photos take up a lot of storage space, and it can be difficult to get under the 5GB limit when the time comes. Instead, consider using a personal Gmail account if you need to store photos.
• Don't log into Google Maps or YouTube with your Cornell Gmail for activity you want to keep forever or must always have access to. Any activity on those apps connected to your Cornell Gmail will not be accessible to you if your Cornell Email is restricted, locked, or lost. Use a personal Gmail account for Google Maps or YouTube.
• Purchases on Google Play are tied to the account they are purchased from, so don’t buy apps from your Cornell account that you want for personal use.
• Google Portfolio content is also account-bound and cannot be transferred to another account, such as if you transfer to another university. 

Be cautious about using your Cornell email for:

Job Applications or Professional Contacts

Depending on your activities and relationship to Cornell, access to your Cornell email can be restricted, locked, or lost. If you are using your Cornell email address to apply for jobs, or to communicate with professional contacts, consider backing up contact information and messages to a personal email address.

For job applications, you can include your Cornell.edu address as a secondary contact point, after your personal email address.