06/30/2004: Anti-Virus Quarantine and Notification Service Disabled COMPLETE

This service change has been completed.

If you have any questions regarding this change in service, please contact the BOL Help Desk at (310)825-7452, option 1, or at consult@ucla.edu.

On Wednesday, July 14th, at 12:00 p.m., Communications Technology Services (CTS) will disable the quarantine and notification service of the antivirus scanners for smtp.ucla.edu. Infected messages will be blocked at the gateway and prevented from being delivered. Messages quarantined prior to the shut-off date will remain stored until Wednesday, July 28th, at 12:00 p.m., at which point the quarantine will be shut down in its entirety. This new protocol has been recommended by the Common Systems Group and approved by the Information Technology Planning Board.

Currently, CTS uses antivirus scanners to intercept and quarantine email messages that apparently are infected. The addressee is then notified by email that a message has been quarantined. In a typical week, CTS quarantines half a million messages and then sends half a million notification messages. Over 99 % of the quarantine messages are never acted upon and the average number of messages in quarantine that turn out to be of actual value is less than 1 (out of a half a million). Providing access to this single message produces a half a million messages mostly considered to be SPAM.

The new protocol will significantly reduce the volume of unwanted email messages to the UCLA community and will increase the delivery capacity of the system.

If you have any questions regarding this change in service, please contact the BOL Help Desk at (310)825-7452, option 1, or at consult@ucla.edu.