Urgent problems with all student email

UCL students received a very high volume of spam emails overnight on 9 October 2014.

Updates on this situation will be posted on this page.

Update 9.31am: The affected list has now been closed down as of 9.30 this morning.

Update 10.00am: All students on UCL's SMS list have been texted to apologise for the inconvenience caused.

Update 10.34am: UCL is working on tools to help students delete the spam emails. More information to follow.

Update 10.47am: Students have informed us that they received several thousand emails, rather than up to one thousand as previously stated below.

Update 11.24am: UCL can confirm that no student bank details have been compromised. This was a simple SPAM attack using a mailing list.

Update 13.30pm: UCL ISD have issued instructions on how to delete the messages and the Service Desk (ext 25000) can offer further guidance over the phone.

Update 12.10pm, Friday 10 October: UCL ISD have issued a full statement on the SPAM attack, apologising and addressing key concerns from students.

Original statement 9.15am Thursday 9 October:

"I am sorry to inform you that overnight, multiple emails (perhaps up to 1,000) have been received by students on an all-student email list.

"Some of these purport to come from the UCL President & Provost, Professor Michael Arthur via the previous Provost's e-mail address, provost(at)ucl.ac.uk.

"However, unfortunately, the problem was compounded because replies were posted to the list, and the email address was used to subscribe to various sites.

"UCL ISD are investigating this problem as a matter of urgency.

"Updates on the situation will be posted on this page and the @uclnews Twitter feed as the situation changes.

"Apologies for the inconvenience that this has caused." 

Mike Cope
Director, Information Services Division