Knowing and taking technical measures
The ZID takes many measures to ward off e-mail threats. On this page, you can find out more about the additional technical measures you can take to protect yourself.
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Measures taken by the ZID
In order to protect members of the University of Vienna from dangers in e-mails, the ZID takes the following measures, among others:
- blocking fraudulent or malicious websites in the data network of the University of Vienna
- detecting malware in the data network of the University of Vienna
- requesting the removal of fraudulent or malicious websites and reporting these websites to block lists
- central spam filter for e-mail addresses of the University of Vienna.
Note
Generally, the ZID does not send specific warnings about phishing or malware to university members. These dangers are to be expected at any time and due to the necessary reaction time, it cannot be guaranteed that a warning will reach all users in time. For example, if the ZID is not (yet) aware of the existence of a fraudulent e-mail and therefore does not send an appropriate warning, users might have a false sense of security.
Setting up a spam filter and e-mail program
Activate the spam filter of the provider of your e-mail address or e-mail program. This allows you to block the majority of unwanted and malicious e-mails (spam, phishing, scamming attempts). There is a central spam filter for your University of Vienna e-mail address.
Note
Don’t move, delete or rename the Junk folder of your mailbox of the University of Vienna. Spam e-mails will be otherwise delivered to your inbox.
Make sure that the e-mail program is up to date and leave the automatic update activated. This helps prevent malware from exploiting security gaps in your e-mail program.
For devices that require a particularly high level of security, deactivate the HTML display mode as well. Please note that this can result in faulty text formatting. In addition, it might be more difficult to read the content.
Some e-mail programs (for example, Mozilla Thunderbird) can display web and multimedia contents like a browser. The same recommendations as listed under Browser apply to add-ons for any of these e-mail programs.
Using virus scanner
Activate the virus scanner on your devices and keep it up to date. In Windows, for example, this is Microsoft Defender. Also pay attention to any notifications from the system about the virus scanner.
Keeping operating system and software up to date
Always ensure that your operating system, browser, e-mail program and Office Suite are up to date. Activate the automatic update function if necessary.