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Mailman Data Retention Policy

Mailman owners are responsible for ensuring that emails with continuing retention requirements are transferred to a local storage location such as a network drive. For more information, see UW’s retention schedule.

Examples of items that can be created and/or stored.	NetID Email address Email messages and attachments Name (optional) Application/transaction logs
What happens if an item is manually deleted?	Mailing lists deleted by their owners will be deleted immediately. Note that an owner who has lists with archives of 500 MB or larger will be asked to reduce their size via deletion or removing attachments.
Does anything ever get automatically deleted?	A list is automatically deleted if 1) it hasn’t been used in two years and 2) the owner has not responded to notifications to keep it active. Class lists are retained for three quarters; at the beginning of each quarter, class lists from the same quarter in the prior year will be deleted. Lists that are never used will be deleted when they are at least one year old and the owner has not responded to notifications to keep it active. Starting on December 1, 2020, archived messages older than one year will be deleted.
If a user is no longer authorized to use Mailman what happens to their profile data and items they’ve created?	Mailman does not store a user’s profile data, so it cannot be deleted. Mailman lists created by a user will persist as long as it has at least one owner who is affiliated with the UW. A user’s mailing list posts and responses will persist as long as a list is active and the owner has chosen to maintain it in an archive.

Last reviewed July 9, 2020

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