Bulk sending email at MIT

MIT uses Exchange Online, part of M365, for the Institute’s email system. Microsoft is well-positioned to handle email traffic because of its scale and ability to protect millions of customers from cybersecurity threats introduced by email and other collaboration tools.

Bulk email senders (“spammers”) risk being blocked by email service providers if recipients report a high enough percentage of their emails as spam. All major email providers, including Microsoft, Gmail, and Yahoo, are increasing their security standards to protect users. Unsolicited SPAM is a security threat, especially if it’s wide-net phishing.

To protect MIT’s resources, Microsoft has blocked MIT community members from sending emails because enough of their recipients marked their emails as unwanted or the message simply looked like spam.

When users spam mailing lists with hundreds to thousands of recipients at MIT, the chances of their emails being reported as spam by community members increase exponentially, leading to Microsoft blocking them.

While Microsoft’s current operating policies allow IS&T’s exchange administrators to unblock a user once, IS&T has to appeal to Microsoft to unblock the user if a user is blocked again. The appeals process takes days, if not weeks, before resolution.

As a result, IS&T strongly recommends against the practice of spamming MIT mailing lists.

Instead, community members should look to utilize the following alternatives:

• Request assistance from friends, colleagues, classmates, and club members to share your mailing.
• Use another method of communication, like Slack, Discord, and Reddit, all of which host numerous MIT communities.
• Follow the Association of Student Activities guide on advertising and publicity.
• Convert to actively managed mailman lists, which feature:
  • User election to receive email as a periodic digest instead of as-it-happens
  • Automatic inclusion of a footer with unsubscribe links. Mailjet and Mailchimp, two of the biggest mass mailing marketing providers, require unsubscribe links and name this a top best practice for maintaining a good reputation.
  • Highly configurable membership management tools, including disabling delivery to email addresses that bounce more than X times
  • Different modes of moderation, e.g., no moderation; members can post without requiring approval; all email is held for moderation
  • Archiving all emails delivered to the list, available to anyone, or just list members