We are investigating reported issues with Microsoft Outlook having problems handling mail from our IMAP server.  The issue can result in failures to update folders and even the deletion of some email.

Until the issue is resolved, please use a different email client (Thunderbird or Apple Mail or pine, for example) or our webmail client (SquirrelMail).  There is a second, unsupported, webmail client, roundcube, which some people prefer (especially on mobile devices).

This is a reminder to be very careful to avoid email fraud, in particular phishing attacks.  These days spammers can target individuals much more easily and deliver emails which seem to come from trusted sources and may use your personal name (including nicknames).  They usually send you to a webpage that asks for passwords for email and/or bank accounts.

Please see the UofT webpage about this at Avoiding Email Fraud.

As usual, if you have any questions please send email to requests@math.toronto.edu.

1) Due to large increases in spam emails arriving at the central UofT mail servers (UTORExchange, UTMail+, and UTORmail) they have decided to more aggressively filter email by default.  This may result in an increase in false-positives so people should check their junk email folders to ensure that no important email is being filtered.  More information is available at:

UofT Memo: Changes to Spam Filtering Thresholds

2) This does not affect our departmental email system (email addresses ending in @math.toronto.edu or @math.utoronto.ca).  For information about spam filtering here please see:

Departmental Email and Spam Filtering

Spammers are trying to phish Departmental usernames and passwords with emails with Subject lines:

Department of Mathematics Activities

The body of the message is:

Please delete this spam.

Spammers are trying to phish UofT UTORids and passwords with emails with Subject lines:

Email Service Alert utoronto.ca

This message is particularly poorly written (at one point the message says to “enter your details incorrectly”) but the main clue that this is spam is that the link is not to the utoronto.ca domain (you can determine the link by hovering on it in most browsers and email clients).  Do NOT click on links that you do not know to be legitimate.  Delete that email.

Our email system now greylists incoming email from many sites.  Currently we only delay for one minute but that may change as we adjust things to minimize spam.  We have a number of greylisting exceptions and if there is a particular site that you would like to be exempt from greylisting please let us know at requests@math.toronto.edu.