Deborah has said that some new students have reported that they cannot create accounts on the VLC with email addresses that include aol.com and hotmail.com.

The most likely explanation is that AOL and Hotmail are blocking the emails from our server and marking it as spam.

So the first thing to check is your spam folder. It can be called different things, perhaps AntiSpam folder, or Bulk Mail folder.

Occasionally, a legitimate email may be moved to your spam folder. If that has happened, you can usually move the email back to your inbox and remove it from the spam folder, and mark it as 'Not Spam' to ensure that you receive emails from us in the future.

Spam is unsolicited email or newsgroup postings usually advertising some product or service. Spam is cheap marketing, sending messages to millions of people for very little cost.

The Virtual Learning Centre has a very simply policy about Spam. We don’t send it and we don’t support people who do. We will not abuse the confidence and trust that you place in us by sharing your information with others. We do not rent or sell information about you to anyone. If you provide contact or other information to us, then that information remains in our strict confidence. You can read our full privacy policy at www.baillie.org.uk/privacy

If you want a free email address, we can offer you a free email account on YOUniversity.org.uk or socialworker.org.uk. We have been able to partner with Google.com in developing an email system that is totally hosted on their servers and utilises a similar web interface found in their offering of Google Mail including Google Chat, Google Calendar and searching capabilities.

You'll get more information at www.baillie.org.uk/email

Note: Anyone can request a YOUniversity.org.uk email address, but the socialworker.org.uk email address is only available to qualified social workers, and we will check the Register of social service workers for Scotland before allocating an email address.