Kansas State University

What causes K-State email to be blocked by other email providers

Submitted by Information Technology Services

The IT Help Desk continues to receive numerous calls about email blocking that has disrupted our ability to communicate with those who receive their mail via a Microsoft email provider — Hotmail, MSN, Live365 — and other email service-providers. This issue impacts everyone who’s trying to send email to one of these addresses, plus everyone who sends email to any K-State address that forwards to a Microsoft email provider — including addresses on K-State mailing lists. Hotmail is one of the top two places where K-Staters forward their mail.

The main reasons why K-State email to another email provider gets blocked:

• A K-Stater forwards their email to a non-K-State account and then marks some of it as spam. That causes the recipient email provider to block all email from K-State addresses.

• K-Staters disclose their eIDs/passwords to spammers, who in turn use the compromised K-State email accounts to spam the world and the campus. Again, that causes the recipient email provider to block all email from K-State addresses.

NOTE: It takes only one K-Stater to get us on these blocked lists.

What is our email provider doing about the blocked email issue?

• Identifying compromised accounts by recognizing certain keywords or logins from known malicious network.

• Updating spam filtering methods to try to stop scams from reaching your inbox.

• Communicating with other email providers on our behalf to get them to remove us from block lists.

What can K-Staters do?

• If you forward your email off campus, be responsible for what you do with it. Don't mark it as spam on the receiving end. If you don't want it, delete it. If it came from a K-State listserv mailing list that you don't want any more, unsubscribe from that list.

• Read emails carefully and delete those asking for credentials such as an eID/password. K-State will never ask for your eID/password in an email.

• Report suspected phishing scams with full-header information to abuse@k-state.edu.

• Discontinue forwarding your email.