Archive for the 'Email' Category
October 28th, 2009 by Isaac Straley
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Phishing
On October 9, 2009, more than 6000 UCI affiliates received an email message claiming that they were required to click on a link which would take them to a web site to update their email accounts. This message has been confirmed to be an example of “phishing,” a malicious attempt to have you divulge personal information in order to allow someone to gain access to your information or services.
The Office of Information Technology (OIT) would like to remind you that you will never be asked for, and you should never provide, your password or other personal information by email. If you ever question a request for information, please contact the OIT Help Desk at (949) 824-2222 or oit@uci.edu so we can help you check its validity. If you suspect that you have received a phishing email, do not respond to it or click on the links. You may optionally report it to the Anti-Phishing Workgroup, but in any case delete it.
Spear phishing emails are a special type of phishing email targeted to a select group of users. These emails tend to be more specific than a regular phishing email, including information more detailed and familiar to the recipient. As with standard phishing emails, these messages often include a request for personal information and a notification of account suspension or closure for failing to reply. At UCI, such a message will often simulate official notification from a real campus department such as OIT, and may make reference to your actual account or email address.
More information on phishing and how to protect yourself can be found online. If you have not already done so, OIT strongly recommends you take the online “Information Security” tutorial available on TED.
July 22nd, 2009 by Dee Cart
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Thunderbird
IAT-AdCom has recently completed the process of helping UCI administrative departments migrate to a new email service structure. 12 departments and 570 users have been assisted in this process since January.
The migration involved three changes, each intended to improve email service to affected users. The most obvious change was moving from Eudora, a program that is no longer supported by its developer and has become increasingly error-prone and insecure, to Thunderbird.
However, behind this obvious change, users were also migrated from the POP protocol for email delivery to IMAP. There are many advantages to IMAP, not least of which is the ability to see the same email messages from every computer, and even from Webmail. IMAP also allows the server to tell the user when new mail has arrived, rather than the user creating an unnecessary workload for the server by polling it: “Is there new mail yet? How about now?”
Finally, users were migrated to the campus’s main Enterprise Services email server, allowing for more cost-effective support, and providing better response time and more space for email storage.
Candidate users were given a choice of making the change themselves, using online self-help instructions, or waiting for their department’s turn and getting personal assistance.
While change is never easy, many people have already commented that the new system is an improvement.
May 22nd, 2009 by Andrew Laurence
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Blackberry
The campus wireless network has enabled mobile computing for laptop and tablet computers for years. Faculty and staff may be less aware that NACS also offers services to users of handheld mobile devices such as iPhones and Blackberries.
If you use Oracle Calendar to manage your appointments, NACS offers support for wireless synchronization so you can carry your calendar with you. Oracle Calendar offers two methods for synchronizing a personal digital assistant, Desktop Calendar Sync (for PDAs) or Mobile Data Sync (for smartphones and cell phones.) These methods are mutually exclusive, and should not be intermingled.
For users of NACS’s Exchange server, you can get access to your email via Blackberry by using Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) for Exchange. BES is a “push” technology meaning the Exchange server will update your Blackberry whenever new data (email, events) is delivered to your account.
If you need help with these resources, or have other ideas how NACS can support mobile devices and technologies, please call x4-2222 or email nacs@uci.edu.
April 24th, 2009 by Brian Roode
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spam
NACS employs many techniques to maximize the quality of the campus email system, and in particular to limit the amount of junk email (spam) faculty and staff receive. Known spam senders are automatically blocked, for example, and campus mail gateways require adherence to email standards (which spammers often ignore) before email is accepted for delivery.
Beyond that, email delivery is a balancing act between reliability and convenience on the one side, and security on the other. It is annoying to receive junk email, but it is unacceptable to block a message which was wanted.
One feature of the campus email service that helps achieve this balance is the mail-scanning service which rates every incoming message for the likelihood that it is junk mail. This assessment is recorded in special “header” lines in the delivered email of the form “X-UCIRVINE”.
Sometimes a message comes from a dubious source. Those messages get a header line “X-UCIRVINE-MailScanner-From:” Other times the content of the message matches patterns associated with spam. These messages will get a line “X-UCIRVINE-SpamScore:” with a number of copies of the letter ’s’ proportional to the number of suspicious elements in the messages.
These lines are not normally displayed by email readers, but users can configure the programs to look for these lines and file away such messages in a spam folder for later assessment at their convenience. For users of NACS’s Enterprise Services email, this spam filter is easily activated with “My Email Options.”
Only messages coming to UCI from off campus are subject to this analysis. Intracampus email is delivered directly.
NACS tunes the rules that characterize email regularly, incorporating each new trick developed by spam senders into the mail scanner.
Faculty and staff working from home (sending email from off campus) should consider using Webmail, the VPN, or configuring their email software to use the authenticated campus mail gateway (smtp.uci.edu) to avoid the possibility that your email might be scanned, flagged, and isolated.
April 24th, 2009 by John Mangrich
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UCInetID
Many campus network and computer services are reserved for faculty, staff, and students, and your network identity (UCInetID) is the key to accessing them.
People who separate from the University are no longer eligible for some or all such services, and their UCInetIDs are subject to deletion. It may be helpful to understand the policies for UCInetID deletion.
The UCInetIDs of faculty and staff who separate from the University become eligible for deletion when their records are removed from the campus payroll database. In general, you will receive notification of pending deletion 60 days after removal from the payroll database, and the actual deletion will take place 30 days later. Retirees may request to retain their UCInetID and certain services, such as email. Faculty awarded emeritus status retain full UCInetID privileges.
Students lose email and services 1 year after they leave unless they graduate and apply for lifetime alumni services, although access to Registrar services continue for at least 2 years.
March 26th, 2009 by John Mangrich
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Daily Spam (red) and other Email (blue)
In 2008, UCI email readers were spared almost one billion spam messages which were blocked by the NACS spam-mitigation system prior to delivery. This represents more than 21,000 messages for each faculty, staff, and student at UCI last year.
Of the messages accepted for delivery, 12 million were labeled as potentially spam so that people could quarantine them and inspect them at their convenience. Here is a summary of the spam and mail delivery statistics for 2008:
Total Messages Blocked: 869,295,065
Total Messages Accepted: 97,484,167
Total Messages Accepted marked as spam: 11,786,134
The chart shows the number of spam messagess blocked each day in 2008 (in red) and the number of messages accepted for delivery (in blue.) You can find more information on spam and spam filtering on line.
