Email Warning for Residency

[Apollyon]

It's a bummer, but some residency programs don't have good anti-virus or anti-spam software. Once again, I got an email from some domain like "akdsaatkiddingporat.com"; the email account is the one I used EXCLUSIVELY while applying for residency. During the season, I got one of these, and they come randomly. Two other times, I got emails, one from Italy, and the other from a student at Finch; both the sender and recipient had been added in, as the message wasn't germane to either of us.

Either some residency program sold the list (unlikely), or someone used a virus to exploit Outlook. Then, either the virus did it's job, or the trolled names were sold to a spammer.

Just be careful (although I don't know how you can tell programs that they need better antivirus protection, without them summarily chucking your app in the garbage).

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[edfig99]

you'd be amazed at how technologically inept most administrative offices are. I think it would be okay to maybe give them a call or an email and mention that you think they may have a virus on their computer and the basis why....if anything they wouldn't chuck your app away...you might get a notation in your app as being "considerate" or "helpful". The other thing you can do is send an email to postmaster@whatever the school domain is and let them know what happened and they can look into it..

i wouldn't be surprised if every admission office has a virus out there! i know our university has spam filters on the servers, but there really is no good anti-spam ware out there...at least, not anything that wouldn't interfere with their day to day activities (i.e. you don't want your interview invitations being filtered out, right?)

good luck.

 

[rastelli]

Some medical students might be aware of this already...in case a few of you are not, listen up!!! Do not use a hotmail account as your contact email for ERAS. Many programs send invitation invites in groups, and hotmail detects this as spam. ERAS makes a warning about this...last year they did it about November in the interview season. This was a bit of a disadvantage to some applicants. Luckily, I managed to figure it out way before that......Good luck to all.

 

[Winged Scapula]

Originally posted by rastelli
Some medical students might be aware of this already...in case a few of you are not, listen up!!! Do not use a hotmail account as your contact email for ERAS. Many programs send invitation invites in groups, and hotmail detects this as spam. ERAS makes a warning about this...last year they did it about November in the interview season. This was a bit of a disadvantage to some applicants. Luckily, I managed to figure it out way before that......Good luck to all.

Hotmail detects this as spam? And does what? I get dozens of real spam messages to my Hotmail account and while it is filtered to my Junk Mail Folder, Hotmail does little to nothing to prevent it from filing my folders.

 

[Scrubbs]

As I heard it, we got the warning last year b/c in the 2001-2002 cycle, applicants did not receive interviews b/c hotmail trashed 'em. I don't use hotmail, so I don't know what happens, but why take the chance?

 

[Apollyon]

Unless you have the "exclusive" function on, Hotmail will put the emails that it perceives as junk into the "junk mail folder"; it's eminently simple to check that folder just after looking in the regular mailbox. However, not even one message went into my junk mailbox.

ERAS did, though, mention Duke and one or two other schools by name, that had emails discarded before they made it to the recipients' mailboxes.

 

[dharmabum7]

eras has a new messaging system this year so that all messages that are sent to your email, are in the messaging system also. so as long you keep checking eras, this should not be a problem this year...