In an effort to cut down on spam and increase the security of NDSU's e-mail system, the IT Division will be implementing a new feature to stop criminals who break into student, faculty and staff accounts in order to send junk e-mail and phishing scams.
Typically, the first indication for IT staff that an e-mail account has been "hacked" is that it starts to send out large amounts of e-mail — sometimes thousands of messages — over a short period of time.
The new security system prevents large numbers of e-mails being sent from NDSU Webmail, and will notify the user if he or she tries to send too many messages. This will only affect outgoing messages sent through Webmail -- not e-mail from programs such as Outlook, Mac Mail or Thunderbird.
The system will also run an anti-spam filter that will detect and block obvious spam being sent from NDSU e-mail accounts. This filter runs on all outgoing e-mail from NDSU Webmail and from e-mail programs like Outlook.
For the vast majority of e-mail users -- even those who send messages to department employee lists, project teams or student groups -- this will not be a problem.
Some individuals who send e-mails to a large number of addresses at one time may receive notification that their high-volume e-mails have been blocked. These individuals may wish to use Listserv or Blackboard to send these announcements.
This is unlikely to have any impact on the vast majority of e-mail users. However, anyone who does have difficulty sending e-mail to a large list should e-mail the IT Help Desk or call 231-8685 for assistance.
