What’s with the Email Bounce back messages?

This week you may have found that a number of your emails were bouncing back to you as being blocked by the recipient’s email provider.  Why has this happened?  Well, some unsuspecting individuals on the campus responded to the recent phishing emails that hit the campus and this is a direct result of those responses.  Here are the basics of how our email gets blocked by other email providers.

1.    Individual (DSU mail recipient) receives a bogus email telling them that their account is about to expire (IT account, banking account, online credit card, etc) and is asked to confirm their account information by clicking on a link in the email or responding directly to the email

2.    The phishing party then uses this information to relay mail across the Internet.  Tens of thousands of emails are sent out to various email lists claiming to come for someone at deltastate.edu

3.    SPAM sites that monitor SPAM senders mark any mail coming from deltastate.edu as SPAM

4.    Your email recipient can no longer receive mail from anyone on the campus until the issue is resolved

5.    Network Services contacts all of the various SPAM blacklisting agencies to let them know the issue has been addressed and makes the formal request that the deltastate.edu mail server be removed from the blacklist

6.    Typically, within 12-48 hours, we are removed from the blacklisting organization

7.    From there, the recipient’s mail provider will receive updates from the blacklisting service and this will typically fully resolve the issue within 36-72 hours.

As you can see, phishing emails can have very serious repercussions.  If something looks suspicious, the chances are it is!!  Please DO NOT respond to these types of messages.  No legitimate agency would send an email requesting this type of information from you over email.   The best course of action is to delete the message from your inbox immediately.

If you have questions or concerns, or need assistance in changing your password, please contact the OIT help desk @4444 or our office on campus.

ASK OIT? Your Questions Answered by OIT Staff

 askoit@deltastate.edu

What do the terms “Phishing” and “Blacklisting” really mean?

Phishing: (fish´ing) (n.) The act of sending an e-mail to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft. The e-mail directs the user to visit a Web site where they are asked to update personal information, such as passwords and credit card, social security, and bank account numbers, that the legitimate organization already has. The Web site, however, is bogus and set up only to steal the user’s information.

 http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/p/phishing.htm

Blacklisting: (v.) To place an email address or an IP address on a list of known spammers.

 http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/b/blacklist.html