Recently Williams emails were not being delivered to some addresses. Verizon, in particular, was not allowing Williams emails. If you sent email to a @verizon.com address it was likely not delivered. They had Williams flagged as being a spam source. This instance has been resolved but it is important for everyone to understand what initially caused the problem .

All email providers (AOL, MSN, Verizon, Williams, Google, etc) try to block email servers which are known to send spam emails. If they did not do this, we would be overwhelmed with spam. Last month several Williams employees fell for phishing scams and provided their username and password either in an email or by logging into fake Williams webmail pages. The phishers then used those credentials to send massive amounts of spam from the Williams mail server. This caused serveral providers to flag us as spammers. In the case of MSN, Hotmail and Live.com, they blocked our email but provided a bounce message that your email was not delivered. In the case of Verizon they simply made the email go away (not delivered and you wouldn’t know). This highlights the importance of NEVER providing your username and password in an email. Also beware of websites that look like Williams webmail, but are not https://webmail.williams.edu (check the address!!)  When in doubt, check with OIT by calling x4090 or emailing desktop@williams.edu