Subject: Illinois email identified as SPAM
From: Tidrick, Christopher C [mailto:ctidrick@illinois.edu] Sent: Friday, March 29, 2013 8:52 AM To: ACESLISTSERV uie_fieldstaff Cc: ACESLISTSERV uie_admin Subject: Illinois email identified as SPAM
Dear Colleagues,
Due to a number of compromised @Illinois email accounts sending out bulk spam, the Illinois.edu domain has been flagged as spam (“blacklisted”) by several large spam filtering services. As a result, outgoing email from our email addresses is being blocked by some large organizations. CITES is actively working to alleviate this major interruption to our outgoing email services.
If you get any email bounced back from external organizations, it is likely due to this problem.
If correspondence you are sending to an outside organization bounces and you absolutely must send the message, I would suggest using a third party email address (such as gmail) to deliver the message. While we normally wouldn’t suggest that non-Illinois email addresses are used for University business, if the message is vital and does not contain security-sensitive information, this is a temporary workaround.
I will send out additional notification when CITES has given us the all clear.
Just a note. This problem was likely caused by individual users who clicked on links in phishing/scam emails. Please do not click on links in unexpected emails and emails from unknown senders. If your machine/account is compromised, it can have a negative impact on the entire university. If you ever have a question about the validity of an email, a member of the ExtensionIT staff will be happy to assist you.
Thanks.
-Chris
Chris Tidrick
Director of Information Technology