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This morning, Tom Davis, Director of the Computer Laboratory, sent the following memo to all deans, directors, and chairs, announcing an upgrade to mail.msu.edu scheduled for December 17. As requested, we're forwarding it so that computer support people will be ready as your clients start to contact you. /rich On December 17, 2003 we will implement a number of improvements to mail.msu.edu, MSU's central e-mail service: - Virus filtering of all e-mail - Basic "spam" filtering option - Other feature enhancements and bug fixes - Additional server hardware The new anti-virus tool scans mail looking for virus "signatures" and will reject any incoming message that has a known virus. We believe that virus scanning is critical to the health of the network and this important new feature has been endorsed by the Network Communications Committee and the Computer Laboratory Advisory Group. The new basic anti-spam tool applies a variety of tests to measure the likelihood that a given piece of mail is spam (unsolicited mass mail). For users who enable this feature, each incoming message that appears to be spam will be tagged for special handling. Both of these new features have been frequently requested by users and should provide some welcome relief from the intrusive and often harmful effects of mail-borne viruses and spam. However, we strongly urge users to continue to employ desktop anti-virus products and we also encourage the use of new anti-spam functions built into e-mail client programs such as Netscape 7.1 and Outlook 2003. More information is available at http://help.msu.edu/mail or by calling the Consulting Help Desk at 432-6200. Also be aware that we are planning to retire the aging Pilot e-mail system in March 2004 and all remaining users will be required to upgrade to mail.msu.edu. More information on the Pilot retirement will be distributed after the first of the year.