January 24, 2013
Options for resolving blocked email issues
K-State has had email blocked by Hotmail, MSN and Live365 off-and-on since September 2012, which is more than any other email service provider. Information technology services has experienced limited success following established procedures in having these blocks removed.
Over the break, information technology services worked with our email provider to improve the blocking issue. Merit implemented a process that more aggressively detects compromised email accounts. This new process locks accounts after it detects 30 authentications and sends 1,000 messages in a 10-minute period of time. This will help with some of our blocked list issues.
Within two weeks our service provider will route our outgoing email through their antivirus and anti-spam system and this should catch most of the spam being sent out from compromised accounts, helping to keep us off blocked lists.
K-Staters can do their part by not responding to phishing scams. Another way K-Staters can help is to not mark emails coming from K-State or forwarded by K-State as spam.