The UITS Building (Eric Yang/The Daily Campus)
University of Connecticut students faced legitimate emails being sent to their spam folders last week as a result of higher email filtering from University Information Technology Services (UITS).
UITS received reports last week about non-spam emails going to student’s spam folders, said UITS Interim Manager for Server Support Josh Boggis. This was due to the mail being marked as spam by Google.
“In reported cases, mail was not tagged as spam by Office 365 but by G Suite,” Boggis said. “We consulted with Google and made an adjustment. As of last week, we have not received new reports.”
The new student email system, which uses Office 365, has additional protection against phishing, Boggis said. The mail sent to a student’s account is routed through Office 365 filters and then again through the Gmail filters.
“We ended up using the email filters included with Office 365, a service we already owned,” Boggis said. “It not only had better spam and virus filtering but also improved phishing protection.”
The new system selected by UITS is also a cloud-hosted service, Boggis said. If the power were to go out across the Storrs campus, the university-run email would still continue to function, as it does not depend on the local data center.
With the new Office 365, links and other attachments are scanned for unsafe content, according to an official UConn posting. ‘Safe’ links will allow you to visit the site, and unsafe links will display a warning message.
Faculty, staff and student employees receive digest messages that list quarantined and spam emails from the past 24 hours, according to the UConn website. From this list, the receiver has the ability to mark emails as “junk, phishing and not junk.”
“(UITS) recommends the ‘trust but verify’ approach,” Boggis said. “Students should occasionally check their spam or junk folders to make sure no legitimate emails are there.”
If students notice that legitimate emails are being sent to their spam or junk folder, they should contact UITS at helpcenter@uconn.edu or chat with a tech on their website.
Ashley Anglisano is a campus correspondent for The Daily Campus. She can be reached by email at ashley.anglisano@uconn.edu.
