Email Alert: Password Requests

Luke — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:40:00 +0000

Some of you have received a request to email your account name and password to Shane. You should know that ITS has never and WILL NEVER ask for your password though e-mail, and your account will NOT be locked out. The fact that the message appears to be coming from Shane Wilson seems to give the request some credibility. The message did not come from Shane nor did it come from ITS.

Do not respond to the message and delete it from your Inbox.

Art Moore
Director, ITS

iPhone / iPod Touch Documentation Updated

Luke — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:17:48 +0000

We’ve gotten quite a few requests from folks asking about setting up Apple mobile devices to work with the Centre email system. Luckily, the process is easier than ever, but you might find it helpful to see the setup process broken down into steps.

We’ve posted a HowTo at our wiki, which you can access by browsing to http://wiki.centre.edu/its/index.php/IPhone_/_iPod_Touch_email_settings

Feel free to suggest any improvements to the document in the comments section.

Delivery Failure and Undelivered Messages

Shane — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:04:27 +0000

We’ve received several emails and calls from various members of the Centre community over recent days about a rash of “Delivery failure” and “Undelivered” email messages. Sometimes these are in a foreign language (Russian is the most popular), and sometimes they aren’t. Some are getting just a handful, others get 30 or 40 (like me!), and some have as many as 150 (!) messages showing up in their Inbox. We wanted to send out a note to let everyone know what was going on.

The short answer: It’s a bunch of spammers. Spammers have been using Centre email addresses (along with thousands of addresses from other places) in the ReplyTo: field of their emails in an attempt to hide where they are really sending the spam from. Most often they get the email addresses from webpages using programs designed to scour the Internet and add whatever addresses it finds to its list. My guess is they’ve hit Centre’s webpages recently.

There isn’t much we can do about them using our email addresses, unfortunately, but we are looking in to blocking the delivery failure notification messages. Blocking emails like this would also stop any legitimate delivery failure messages as well, so this may be only a temporary solution we put in place until the tide of messages turns toward somewhere else.

Although some particularly nasty spammers try to hijack computers with viruses or worms to get those machines to send out their emails (computers like this are called “zombies”), because of our antivirus program your computer should be safe. However, if you’d like us to check it just to be sure, simply enter a Helpdesk call at http://helpdesk.centre.edu and we’d be happy to do so.

So, to recap:

Spammers are sending out emails with our addresses in the ReplyTo: field.
Not much we can do about it, but we are looking in to blocking the delivery failure messages, at least for the time being.
Your computer should be fine, but if you’d like us to check it we’d be happy to.

This problem will take care of itself once the spammers move on to another list. It might take a few days though, so try and be patient. We know how annoying this problem is, we’ve been hit with it ourselves!

(This message was originally composed by Seth Thompson and sent through the campus listserv)

Centre College ITS » Email

Email Alert: Password Requests

iPhone / iPod Touch Documentation Updated

Delivery Failure and Undelivered Messages