To All Departments and Members of the President-Faculty Mailing List:
Rice Spam Black List Option Available
The Office of the Vice Provost for Information Technology (IT) tested Spam Blacklisting for 3 days, spanning June 7th - 9th. We received overwhelming requests to implement Spam Blacklist service as quickly as possible. Thank you for all of your observations, feedback and suggestions! Read a summary of comments online at: http://www.rice.edu/it/resources/email/blacklists-comments.html
On Wednesday July 5th at 7:00 AM, IT will implement Realtime Blackhole Listing (RBL) service for the IT managed email systems. This service prevents the majority of spam and phishing emails from entering the Rice email system.
How to Opt Out:
In order to provide a robust service for Rice, ALL email customers on IT managed mail servers will automatically be enrolled in the service. However, we've created an Opt Out feature for Rice customers who prefer to receive every message sent to their Rice email address.
To opt out of the blacklist service before its July 5th implementation, go to https://my.rice.edu/EmailBL and login with your NetID and Password, then follow the simple directions on the page.
Test Results
During our three day test, approximately 1.25 million SPAM and Phishing messages were rejected from entering the Rice mail systems. This is almost 1/2 of the total messages we received during that time. Out of these millions of messages, we confirmed 5 valid email servers that were also blocked from the Rice email system and have implemented the OPT OUT/OPT IN tools to allow any individual a choice in the use of this service.
Additional Information
- How Blacklists Work at Rice
- Opting out of Blacklist Blocking of Spam and Phishing Messages
- Whitelisting a Correspondent Whose Message was Blocked
Please continue to direct your comments to ITinput@rice.edu.
Carlyn Chatfield
IT Web Coordinator
Rice University
713-348-4819
