ITS is updating how the university email system handles spam, unsafe mail, links, and attachments.
Email attacks that attempt to steal personal information or compromise systems threaten your security and the security of our community. The university email system has filters that block the bulk of spam messages from being delivered to your mailbox. Senders employ increasingly sophisticated techniques, and in response, starting on June 25, 2018, Information Technology Services (ITS) will implement new filtering capabilities that are designed to provide better protection from malicious emails and any viruses and malware they may contain. This update will alter how Office 365 handles the following:
- Spam: Mail that is identified as spam will have a {SPAM?} tag in the subject line and will go into your Junk mail folder. It will remain there until you choose to delete it.
- Unsafe Mail: Mail marked as potentially malicious, such as phishing messages, will be quarantined and deleted after 30 days. You will receive a digest message from Office 365 that lists all quarantined messages from the past 24 hours and provides options for managing individual messages.
- Links: All URLs are rewritten through Outlook. When you hover over the link in a message, it will display a variation of http://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/. If a link is safe, you will still go to the intended location. If a link is unsafe, you will see a warning message.
- Attachments: All attachments are scanned for malware, and access to attachments considered unsafe will be blocked.
More information about the threat prevention service is available at https://email.uconn.edu/threat-prevention/. Before the change, we will communicate again to share more details and support options.
We are happy to deliver these improvements to the university email service. However, even though technology solutions improve security, good judgement remains your best defense against phishing and other scams. Please be alert for any threats that slip by our filtering, and remember that ITS and other University organizations will not send unsolicited requests for UConn credentials or other personal information.
For more information, contact: ITS at 365@uconn.edu