UPDATE Feb 15, 2011: Microsoft has lifted their block on mail originating from UMBC. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Over the weekend a departmental desktop machine was compromised and it subsequently sent over 500,000 spam messages in less than 24 hours. The end result is that all Microsoft mail (e.g. Hotmail, Live.com, MSN) is blocking mail originating from UMBC mail servers. The single caveat is that anyone who moved their mail to Google@UMBC remain unaffected by the block imposed by Microsoft. Anyone still on the existing UMBC (Cyrus) mail will be impacted by this block. Unfortunately, Microsfot is extremely aggressive in blocking anyone they view as a spam source. To complicate matters further they won't work directly with UMBC in resolving issues. The end result is that most of the time legitimate mail sent to Hotmail users from UMBC is simply blocked. This has created a number of issues for various offices on campus that need to communicate with existing and prospective students. We entered requests to have this block removed using Microsoft's automated interface. The site currently states that the block with be lifted in approximately 48 hours.