Every computing-account owner affiliated with CERN is entitled to a CERN mail address  such as “John.Doe@cern.ch” but up to now this address remained valid even after the end of a person's affiliation if the owner declared an external email address (e.g. “John.Doe@gmail.com”) to which all personal CERN emails (i.e. those sent to “John.Doe@cern.ch”) could be forwarded.* As a result, "John" could continue to write and receive emails ostensibly on behalf of CERN despite the fact that he is no longer a member of the personnel, or subject to the CERN Staff Rules and Regulations and the Computing Rules. It is doubtful whether this makes sense.

In agreement with departments and LHC experiments at the last ITSRM meeting, all CERN email addresses of people whose affiliation has been terminated more than six months ago will be deactivated on 15 October 2012. For all others, including future leavers, CERN email addresses will be kept in accordance with the normal grace periods, i.e. six months after end-of-affiliation. All affected persons were informed in September 2012 and asked to renew their affiliation if they want to maintain their CERN email address. Current CERN retirees are not affected, for now.