The Rice email system compares server information in inbound email to blacklists, then blocks mail from known spam senders.
Blacklists are used to prevent spam (junk email messages) from entering an email system. At Rice, several blacklists are utilized to reduce spam traffic in the university’s email system. All Rice employees and students benefit from this blacklist service, but anyone who is concerned about missing important messages can opt out. Before you opt out of the black list spam blockers at Rice, remember that spam and phishing (email identity fraud and theft) messages make up 80-90% of all messages addressed to rice.edu email accounts.
Rice uses blacklists to block inbound spam, but blacklists have also been used to stop Rice email delivery to external addresses in the past. Two Rice email accounts were compromised and used to send heavy streams of spam, resulting in Rice being identified as a spam sender in 2013. Major email service providers like AOL and Yahoo! blocked all messages sent from Rice.edu addresses until the issue was resolved. When Rice proved that the issue had been resolved, the email service providers began accepting Rice.edu messages again but getting off a black list takes 2-14 days –depending on the mail provider’s automated blocking period.
At Rice, using a blacklist service means that the sender’s address for every incoming email message is compared to several open-source organizations’ blacklists and messages are accepted or rejected by the Rice email system based on where the message originated.
How Blacklists are Used at Rice
- Open source organizations use databases to track email servers that send spam messages or that are set up (configured) in such a way that they can be hijacked by spammers or used as a front for spam or phishing agents. These organizations publish suspicious server addresses in blacklists.
- A software application protecting the Rice email system compares the sender address on all incoming email messages to addresses on the blacklists.
- When an inbound email originates from an email server found on multiple blacklists, Rice refuses to accept the incoming message and returns it to the sender with an explanation of why it was blocked.
- ALLDEPTS, pres-fac, and other Rice-originated email messages do not go through the blacklist service because the messages originate within the Rice system and not outside of Rice.
- Spam identification tools such as DSPAM and Spam Assassin continue to rate the content of messages within the Rice system, placing ***SPAM*** tags on messages that have a high probability of containing junk mail. These tools cannot stop the delivery of messages and are not connected to the black list service in any way.