à£à£Ö±²¥Ðã

The Old à£à£Ö±²¥Ðã University email system is the official electronic mail system for distributing course-related communications, policies, announcements and other information. Most campus faculty/staff email accounts are stored in the cloud as part of Office 365. (If your mailbox is one of the very few email accounts still stored on an Exchange server on site, your email will behave a little differently than what's outlined below.)

Accessing Your Email Account

You are automatically granted an official ODU email account when you are hired.

On most University-managed computers, you'll use Outlook to check and manage your email, but you can access your email from some other email applications or online at . Log in with your full faculty/staff email address (xxx@odu.edu) and your MIDAS password. (See our Email User Guides for information about setting up your email on various platforms.)

Anti-Spam Filters

All incoming and outgoing mail is filtered through Microsoft Exchange Online Protection, which catches and stops a majority of spam and malware. In most cases, spam will end up in your junk email folder instead of your Inbox. You can manage your spam and junk mail settings from directly within Microsoft Outlook or online at . Settings that you change in either place will apply to all incoming email, regardless of which application you use to read and respond to your email messages.

Spam Settings in Outlook
Incoming mail that Microsoft believes to be spam will be routed to your Junk Email folder. You can set your spam preferences in Outlook by clicking on the "Junk" button and selecting "Junk E-mail Options." Here, you can select the level of junk mail protection you prefer. You can also create a list of safe senders that will never get sent to your Junk folder, and a list of blocked senders that will always go straight to Junk.

• (video)

Spam Settings in Outlook for Mac
Incoming mail that Microsoft believes to be spam will be routed to your Junk Email folder. Outlook for Mac allows you to add an email address to your Blocked Senders list, or mark an individual message as junk, but in order to actually manage your junk mail settings, you need to log in to Outlook online (see below).

Spam Settings in Outlook Online
You can change your junk email settings online by adding addresses and domains to your lists of blocked senders or safe senders. Go to and follow the instructions provided in this article from Microsoft:

Quarantined Mail
Outlook attempts to filter out junk, keeping the Inbox clear of content you don't want to see. Usually, junk mail (advertisements, contests, spam, social marketing, etc.) is delivered to the Junk Email folder. Quarantined emails usually contain potentially dangerous or unwanted messages, such as phishing emails or malware. You can request the release of quarantined messages, but use caution. These messages are usually quarantined for a very good reason.

• Release messages from quarantine

Safe Links and Attachments

Microsoft Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) is an added layer of security that protects ODU's computers and networks from outside threats. There are two components to Microsoft ATP that will protect against phishing attempts and malicious email attachments: Safe Links and Safe Attachments.

Safe Links

Safe Links evaluates all links in an email message to determine if they point to safe or harmful content. To do this, ATP replaces all links in incoming messages with longer URLs that begin with "...//na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com," similar to this.

When you click on the link, ATP evaluates the web address. If it's safe, you'll be taken directly to the intended site. If the link is NOT safe, you'll be blocked from the site with a warning message like this.

(While Safe Links greatly improves email security, nothing is 100% effective 100% of the time. If you've followed a link that takes you to a login page of any kind, double check to be sure the page is secure. Learn more about what a secure page looks like here.)

Safe Attachments

Safe Attachments protects against harmful email attachments. Before a message is delivered, ATP opens all attachments in a virtual environment and analyzes them for malicious content. If the attachment is safe, it will be delivered to you along with the original email message. If the attachment is harmful, you'll never receive the message; you will receive an email letting you know that an email with malicious content was blocked. This process does cause a brief delay (a couple of minutes) in the delivery of messages.

Although this service improves email security, you remain our best defense against online threats. Continue to exercise the safe computing practices found at odu.edu/safecomputing.

FAQs about ATP