Spam screening change
Effective Monday, May 21, IS&T will no longer deliver e-mail originating from outside the Institute with a spam score of 25 or above unless the addressor is in an individual's "allow" list. E-mail messages scored at 25 or above tend to target mailing lists rather than specific addresses, and they are often advertisements for stocks, pharmaceutical offerings and the like.
MIT receives more than one million messages a day from outside the Institute: 45 percent are scored at 25 or higher. The scoring change will significantly reduce the volume of e-mail stored in spamscreen folders before purging. In addition to improving management of spam-flagged messages, the scoring change will permit better use of MIT's disk, quota and backup/recovery resources.
IS&T encourages community members to check their spamscreen folders for addressors to add to their allow lists. To review and adjust your spam screen settings, go to the Personalized Settings page at nic.mit.edu/cgi-bin/spamscreen. To learn more about IS&T's spam-screening service, visit web.mit.edu/ist/services/email/nospam.
Certificate renewal
MIT's personal web certificates will soon require renewal. Certificates obtained in the past year are set to expire on July 31.
Renewal of personal web certificates is not automatic. To ensure continued access to MIT's secure Web applications, such as Benefits, SAPweb and WebSIS, plan to renew in the coming weeks. Starting June 4, you can obtain your new personal certificate online at ca.mit.edu.
Note that if you use certificates on multiple machines, you will need to get a new certificate for each machine. For more information, see web.mit.edu/ist/help/cert. If you need assistance, e-mail computing-help@mit.edu or call the Help Desk at x3-1101.
Working green at MIT
The MIT community has a new resource for going green. Launched on Earth Day, the Working Green web site offers tips on everything from ordering recycling bins for your office to reusing packaging materials and buying less-toxic supplies for your lab. The site also provides links to community resources and examples of best practices for reusing and conserving.
MIT's Working Group Recycling Committee (WGR) developed the web site. WGR members include support and administrative staff, representatives from MIT's Environmental Programs Office and Department of Facilities, and members of other campus advocacy groups. Nearly 100 WGR recycling ambassadors actively encourage recycling in their departments, labs and centers.
To lean toward green or become involved in recycling at MIT, visit web.mit.edu/workinggreen.
IT Partners Conference
IT Partners, an Institute-wide group for people who provide computer and technology support, will hold its annual full-day conference on campus on May 31. Michail Bletsas from the "One Laptop Per Child" project will give the keynote speech. There will also be concurrent sessions throughout the day on a variety of topics, including "green technology" energy-saving efforts at MIT, voice over IP, instant messaging
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on May 23, 2007 (download PDF).
