Email

Training or Disabling Clutter in Outlook

Clutter is a Microsoft Outlook feature that attempts to help you filter low-priority email, saving time for your most important messages. The email server keeps track of the email you read and the ones you don’t. Clutter is automatic. As new email comes in, it takes messages you’re most likely to ignore and puts them into the “Clutter” folder. The more you use it, the better it gets. And if you find Clutter isn’t for you, you can turn it off.

It’s important to either closely watch your Clutter folder while it learns your preferences, or disable Clutter, to avoid missing important emails. Information on how to monitor and train Clutter, or how to disable Clutter is available at https://support.csuchico.edu/TDClient/KB/ArticleDet?ID=11701.

Email, Security

Campus Targeted Phishing Email

We received multiple reports this morning of the following phishing email targeting the campus:

The following actions were immediately taken:

  • The sending account was disabled
  • Microsoft also blocked the sending account
  • The link URL was blocked on campus
  • The link URL was reported to Palo Alto Networks to be blocked off campus

If you received this email please delete it without clicking on any links. If you clicked on the link and provided your credentials your account has been compromised. If you suspect your account was compromised you should immediately go to Account Center in the CSU, Chico Portal and reset your password.

There were a few indicators that this was a phishing email:

  • Poor grammar and punctuation
  • Unusual “From” address
  • Non-campus URL link (see the screenshot below).

If you are unsure of the validity of an email you can hover your mouse over any links without clicking on them to see the URL. A URL that does not match the content of the email should be considered suspicious.

Email, Security

Campus Phishing Emails

Campus employees have received multiple phishing attempts this week that appear to be from other campus employees.

The attacker is impersonating high profile accounts, and is attempting to initiate a conversation that would likely lead to a request for information or include a malicious link/attachment. An example of the fraudulent email is included below.

Please delete these emails, do not click any links within the message, and do not respond.

More information about spam and phishing scams is available at http://www.csuchico.edu/isec/basics/spam-and-phishing.shtml

Email, Security

Extra Pay Spam

Campus accounts are receiving a large amount of spam emails today from various campus and off-campus accounts with the subject “Opening For You! Earn Extra” and “Referral to earn Extra Pay.” We are working to have compromised accounts disabled to prevent further emails. Please delete these emails and avoid opening attachments or clicking on links.

Blackboard, Email, VPN, Wireless

Student Portal/WildcatMail Login Issues

UPDATE: The login issues were resolved as of 2:00 PM. Students should be able to log into the Portal, WildcatMail, Wireless, etc..

There is currently an issue with student accounts preventing them from logging into the Portal, WildcatMail, campus wireless, etc..

Technicians are aware of the problem and are working to correct it.  We hope to have this issue resolved by 2:00 today (5/22).

Email

Display Name Changes

As you are hopefully aware, Friday May 19th at 5pm the campus will begin the transition to our new identity management system called Account Center. This process will require us to sync up data from multiple systems that have been managed manually for many years. There are many relatively subtle effects of this synchronization process, but two of them will be highly visible as early as Saturday morning:

  1. You may see changes to your first and/or last name. Your updated name will be copied from the Preferred Name fields in PeopleSoft or if you do not have a preferred name in PeopleSoft, your name will be copied from the Legal Name fields in PeopleSoft. Your name will also include your middle initial (if you have one).
    1. After the new Account Center system is available in early June, you will be able to update the way your name is displayed and these changes will be reflected in other campus systems (email, Blackboard Learn, and Google Apps).
  2. First and last names will be re-ordered in the email system. Names have historically been displayed as LastName, FirstName (e.g. Kodai, Scott).  Beginning on 5/20, the ordering will change to FirstName MiddleInitial LastName (e.g. Scott R Kodai). Since I’ve been involved in early testing of the system, you’ll notice that my name has already been changed (you’ll also notice that my middle initial has already been removed… sometimes it’s good to have connections).
    1. This change will impact the way that you find people in the Global Address List (i.e. when searching for people while sending email). When you search for a user’s name, the default search will now be first name (e.g. Scott) instead of last name (e.g. Kodai). Advanced search options will still allow searching by last name.
    2. Sorting email by “From” in your email client (e.g. Outlook) will result in email from the same person sorting to different parts of the list. For example, email sent by me before the change will sort with the K’s (Kodai, Scott) and email sent after the change will sort with the S’s (Scott Kodai). Of course, searching for email by typing from:”Kodai” will still list all emails sent from me, regardless of the order of my name.

We know this is a significant change and it will likely be frustrating for many of you. I’m sorry for that, but unfortunately there’s no way to make this major implementation completely seamless.

ITSS and the Account Center implementation team are actively working on documentation to assist with the transition and we will be sharing that with you as soon as it’s complete (most likely the middle of next week). Stay tuned!

For a general explanation of the University’s Identity Management Initiative and the Account Center implementation, please see the Enterprise Applications and Data Services website at http://www.csuchico.edu/eads/iam/index.shtml.

If you have questions or concerns, please submit a request at https://support.csuchico.edu or contact IT Support Services at x4357 (HELP).

Email, Maintenance

Active Directory Federation Services Upgrade

Scheduled Downtime: 7:00 AM to 8:00 AM Wednesday, June 15th
Services Impacted: Exchange Email and Office 365
Anticipated Availability: 8:00 AM Wednesday, June 15th

A change to Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) may cause an interruption to Exchange and Office 365 services during this upgrade. After the upgrade is complete users will receive a new logon page when authenticating to the Exchange/o365 web interface.

adfs