ADVISORY: Unwanted Mailing List Sign-up

Friday, November 18, 2022

This message is intended for all members of the U-M community. Please share across your units.

Summary

U-M community members have reported receiving unexpected confirmation emails from email newsletters and listservs for which they did not subscribe.

Problem

U-M email addresses are generally publicly available, and anyone can use a publicly available email to sign someone else up for a mailing list or listserv. Many mailing lists generate a confirmation email to the email address used to sign up. These confirmation messages are what U-M community members are receiving.

Action Items

The best course of action is to not respond to these unwanted confirmation emails. Instead, do the following in U-M Gmail:

  1. Click on the email in your inbox.
  2. Go to the More menu (three dots in the upper right corner of the email) and left-click. 
    More Menu which includes an option to Block sender
     
  3. Select Block. You may get the following prompt:
    Pop up window with text "Block this email address" and a Block or Cancel option.
     
  4. If you see the second prompt, select Block to mark future messages from the sender as Spam. 

In general, the best protection is to not click suspicious links in email. Do not open shared documents or email attachments unless you are expecting them and trust the person who sent them. For more information, see Phishing & Suspicious Email.