March 1, 2008
Fradulent email warning

Please be aware that fradulent messages are being sent to Rice faculty, staff, students, and some alumni email accounts that claim to be from Rice IT or Rice Webmail Support. They ask you reply with your password or follow a link to verify your account and threaten the deletion of the user's account. These are phishing messages and may contain viruses. They should be deleted upon receipt. Do not reply to the message. The senders are in no way affiliated with Rice or the ARA.

Samples of such an email may contain the subject line "Verify Your E-Mail Account" or "Confirm Your E-Mail Address" and purport to be from email addresses like "helpdesk@rice.edu" or "support@rice.edu." Please note that the details of the emails vary, but generally contain something like this:

Dear Rice Webmail User, To complete your Account Verification process, you are to reply to this message and enter your password in the space provided (*******), you are required to do this before the next 48hrs of receipt of thise-mail, or your Webmail Account will be de-activiated and erased from our data base. Your account can also be verified at: http://webmail.mail.rice.edu Thank you for using Rice Webmail Service RICE INTERNET

The senders often harvest user addresses from websites and infected computers and also randomly guess addresses based on common names and words.

If you are ever uncertain of the authenticity of a message from the alumni office, please call us at 713-348-4057 or contact us by email.

December 9, 2005
Fradulent email warning

Please be aware that fradulent messages are being sent to Rice alumni that claim to be from the alumni office. They threaten the deletion of the user's account, and ask that the user open an attachment. These messages contain viruses and should be deleted upon receipt. The senders are in no way affiliated with Rice or the ARA.

One sample of such an email contains the subject line "Warning Message: Your services near to be closed" and purports to be from "administrator@alumni.rice.edu."

Dear Alumni Member, Your e-mail account was used to send a huge amount of unsolicited spam messages during the recent week. If you could please take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and confirm the attached document so you will not run into any future problems with the online service. If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choice but to cancel your membership. Virtually yours, The Alumni Support Team +++ Attachment: No Virus found +++ Alumni Antivirus - www.alumni.rice.edu

The senders often harvest user addresses from websites and infected computers and also randomly guess addresses based on common names and words.

December 2, 2005
Alumni email forwarding down for Comcast subscribers

We have had reports that Comcast subscribers are not receiving email sent to their Rice alumni forwarding accounts (@alumni.rice.edu). We are investigating the cause of this stoppage, and are working with Comcast to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

In the meantime, we suggest that you have your email forwarded to a secondary account, such as Hotmail or Gmail. You can change your forwarding address online. If you encounter any problems logging in or changing your address, or if you have questions about the outage, please contact us by email.

If you know of messages you did not receive, we recommend that you ask the sender to resend directly to your Comcast address. We do not know at this time if the blocked messages will be delivered upon resolution of the issue.

Update (12/9/05) — The issue was briefly resolved December 6, at which time all previously backlogged mail was successfully delivered. However, the problem returned on December 8 and technicians are again in contact with Comcast. All additionally delayed mail should be delivered upon the final resolution of the problem.

July 8, 2005
Virus attack targets alumni email accounts

A few alumni have notified the alumni office that messages containing a computer virus were recently sent to their alumni forwarding accounts. The messages claim to be from the alumni office, but the addresses and links are faked. The senders are in no way affiliated with Rice or the ARA.

We believe the attack to be from a variant of the W32/Mytob.gen@MM virus. The virus harvests addresses from infected computers and also randomly guesses addresses based on common names. The messages ask recipients to "confirm" sensitive identity and password information for security reasons.

If you should receive a suspicious email message, do not open any attachments or follow any links. Contact the alumni office directly, and we will be happy to verify the authenticity of any information request.