New spam filters in UIC email help reduce phishing attempts

With increased remote working, teaching and learning has also come an increase in spam and phishing attempts, including some sophisticated ones targeted specifically at UIC students, faculty and staff. It is important, now more than ever, to stay safe online.

In recent months, Technology Solutions has been working on several fronts to improve email security and better protect the UIC community from increasing cyber-threats. Effective Saturday, May 29, 2021, email routing to uic.edu will be updated to improve overall UIC email delivery security. As a result of this change, UIC email users may see more email routed to Junk Email or Spam folders.

Email that is detected to contain malware or phishing scams is discarded, while email judged to be spam will be sent to your “Junk Email” folder (in Outlook/Exchange) and “Spam” folder (in Gmail). Potential spam sent through UIC listservs will have a ***SPAM*** tag prepended to its original subject in Exchange.

While spam filters are continually updated for effectiveness, spammers also continually develop new techniques to get past those filters. You may sometimes see spam make it to your inbox, and may also find email that isn’t spam in your Junk Email/Spam folder.

We suggest that you periodically check your Junk Email/Spam folder in case any messages are incorrectly marked as spam, and report any phishing attempts that do make it to your inbox.