General information about the mail service

In the network of mathematics we maintain a so-called IMAP server, which allows you to read your e-mails from anywhere in the world with the help of an IMAP-enabled mail client. The big advantage of an IMAP server in contrast to the more commonly used POP servers is that your mails remain stored on the server and are thus available to you independently of your computer or home area.


For the security of your e-mail and password, our IMAP server supports encryption via SSL as well as TSL. With encryption, both the login data (username and password) and the e-mails themselves are transmitted in encrypted form between your mail client and the mail server. A non-encrypted access to the IMAP server is no longer possible for security reasons.

During the first encrypted access via , Mozilla Thunderbird, Outlook or various other mail clients, your mail client may tell you that it cannot confirm the server's security certificate because the certification authority is unknown to it. Tell your mail client to import this certificate or to remember the certificate permanently.


Configuration summary

    E-mail address: Your regular username followed by "@math.uni-paderborn.de".

    User / Password: your regular username and password

Protocol outgoing mail server: SMTP

  • Outgoing mail server: smtp.math.uni-paderborn.de
  • SMTP-Port: 465
  • Security: SSL/TLS
  • Method: password normal

Protocol incoming mail server: IMAP

  • Incoming mail server: imap.math.uni-paderborn.de
  • IMAP-Port: 993
  • Security: SSL/TLS
  • Method: password normal

Configuration of single programs

    Configuration of Mozilla Thunderbird mail client

    Configuration of Outlook

Encryption and certificates

An encrypted communication is of course only useful if the identity of the communication partner can be verified. To be able to do this, there are so-called certificates, which are "signed" by a trustworthy authority.

In the case of our mail server, the certificates are signed by the certification authority (CA) of the University of Paderborn. In turn, this signature is signed by the certification authority of the DFN.

To be able to check our certificates you have to import these two certificates before.