NUS NoSpoofMail

Email-spoofing refers to the act of sending email using a fake identity. This is a problem faced not only by NUS, but the world over. The weakness lies not in any particular email software but the industry protocol that enables email delivery. Meanwhile, all actions taken by Computer Centre can only reduce spoofed emails, not eliminate them.

NUS, being an open learning environment, relies a lot on emails for communication. As such, it is important that we safeguard the email infrastructure so that we can have reasonable trust in the integrity of emails we receive. To achieve this, one of the steps that Computer Centre will take is to require that all users authenticate to the system before sending emails.

Essentially, all incoming emails to NUS that are sent by non-authenticated senders will be dropped, if the emails claim to originate from an NUS community member, be it staff or student (ie. the FROM field is ). The only way these emails can be successfully delivered is for the sender to first authenticate to the system.

NOTE:

Sending emails to NUS from Yahoo, Hotmail and the like is not affected by our implementation as these emails do not carry an NUS address in the FROM field.

Whether or not change is required of you depends on the email clients you use, as explained below.

Users of Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Web Access (OWA)

If you are using Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Web Access (OWA) to send emails, nothing has changed, as authentication has always been required.

Users of Other Email Clients

If you are using email clients such as Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape, just to name a few, you will need to configure the email clients to authenticate with your NUSNET account.

Please refer to the following links to check how you will be affected and also for guidance on how some of these email clients can be configured.

How will I Be Affected?

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