June 2, 2005
E-mail settings to be changed to fight spam
The UW will soon begin implementing more vigorous procedures for preventing computers on the UW network from being used to originate spam.
A small change will be made on June 27 affecting UW dial-in modem users who have their e-mail program set to send e-mail using a service other than the central UW services. Details are described in the Web page listed below. A relatively small number of people use the modem pool in this way.
Beginning Aug. 8, Computing & Communications will be implementing e-mail changes affecting many more people. On that date, authentication will be required to send e-mail through the central UW e-mail services. Settings in many desktop e-mail programs will need to be changed to prompt for UW NetID and password.
Both of these changes will be taken care of automatically for users who send e-mail through WebPine, or those who use Pine through UW servers named Homer, Dante or Aagaard.
“We encourage users to make these changes as soon as possible,” says Oren Sreebny, director of client services and learning technologies for Computing & Communications.
Detailed instructions for updating configurations are available at here
http://www.washington.edu/computing/email/manage/summeremail.html
Information about systems not described on this page is available directly from C&C, at help@cac.washington.edu.
“We have had lots of spam sent from UW-infected computers, often without the computer owner’s even knowing it is happening,” says Dave Wall, consultant for client services at C&C. “Spam coming from the UW sometimes prompts major Internet services to block UW e-mail, as happened last November with AOL. So, we needed to implement more security for how e-mail messages are sent.”
