February 14th, 2008 - Spam/Virus IP Blocker Service Implemented

This change does introduce the potential of rejecting email you are sending from your laptop or home system if you are using mail.cs.indiana.edu as your outgoing (SMTP) mail server. To eliminate this possible problem we encourge you to use authenticated sending via smtp.cs.indiana.edu instead of unauthenticated sending via mail.cs.indiana.edu from any system that is not on the local CS network (eg. your laptop or home computer). When using smtp.cs.indiana.edu you are bypassing the spam scanning so are not subject to the IP Blocker. The details of using smtp.cs.indiana.edu can be found in the associated FAQ.

It should be noted that if you are currently using mail.cs.indiana.edu as your outgoing mail server it is already possible to have your email rejected when coming in from a remote ISP if you get unlucky enough to be using an IP address that is in a blocklist. However, what usually happens in these cases is that the email is actually accepted but may be tagged as spam so the intended recipient may never see it. With this new service the message is rejected outright and you will see that immediately so the chance of your email silently being filed in a spam folder and never seen is reduced.

Please let us know if you have any questions about this change.

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