Blacklisting Issues

As spam problems increase on the internet, ISPs are taking more drastic measures to block spam email and our forwarding accounts are frequently the victim. The most frequent type of rule that catches us misidentifies the mail as coming from an "open relay."

Unfortunately, this is not an easy problem to solve, as there are literally thousands of ISPs who can configure their spam rules in any way they wish. Exacerbating the situation is the fact that there are no real standards for tagging mail to identify it as "not spam," and if there were, spammers would simply forge the tags.

The University is acutely aware of this problem, and we are trying to find a solution, but in the meantime, we feel that our service provider has been very responsive in contacting individual ISPs on our request and getting us off the blacklists. If you find your forwarded mail is being blocked by your ISP, we encourage you to contact us at hoosonline@virginia.edu so we can report it and/or contact your ISP and ask them not to block your forwarded mail.

We would like to continue providing some sort of permanent email address for our alumni and will continue researching affordable options that are in accordance with the University's policies.