by Marco Di Vittorio Manager, Application Administration Academic & Collaborative Technologies (ACT) Most traffic moves slower during a snow storm. Pedestrian, vehicle and airline routes typically grind to a halt when large white flakes flood the ground in high volumes. Web traffic on the other hand, can exhibit a very different pattern during the same … Read More

The last few days have seen some challenges with campus email. The main symptom was delayed delivery of inbound email caused by a massive increase in the volume of email we were receiving, including “pharmaceutical” spam. First, I want to thank the community for their patience as ITS staff worked to identify and mitigate the … Read More

Portal (Blackboard) Maintenance is Scheduled for May 5, 22:00 EDT  –  May 7, 22:00 EDT The Portal will undergo scheduled maintenance from Friday May 5, 2017 at 10:00 PM until Sunday, May 7, 2017 at 10:00 PM in order to install an updated version of the product. Details of the new version will be made … Read More

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT We have discovered a problem with something called the OneClass Easy Invite Chrome Extension which may result in the theft of any username and password you use for websites and services, including Blackboard and other university and/or commercial/community services. If you receive an email soliciting enrolment in OneClass, do not click on any … Read More

From: Luke Sutherland Academic & Collaborative Technology – Operations Group It has come to our attention that a feature of the O365 mailbox (Clutter: https://blogs.office.com/2014/11/11/de-clutter-inbox-office-365/)  has been flagging some internal messages sent by the University as ‘clutter’. This means the message bypasses the inbox and is deposited in the “Clutter” folder. The tool is adaptive … Read More

From: Saira Mall, Manager, ACT Support During the holiday break beginning Wednesday December 23rd, limited Portal Help Support services will be available only on Dec 23rd, 28th, 29th, and 30th, for two hours each day. Full Portal Help support services will resume Monday January 4th, 2016. Instructor requests for access to a course website in … Read More

Please share widely We have been alerted to attempts by hackers to target UofT students with fake “Blackboard” prompts, which redirect to a fake Blackboard login page. This could include receiving an email that says you have an important course announcement or assignment due. The real UofT Blackboard can only be accessed via the UTORWeblogin … Read More

As previously circulated, please be advised that there will be a scheduled maintenance on Portal from 10:00PM on Friday May 8, 2015 to 10:00 PM on Sunday May 10, 2015. Portal service will be unavailable during the maintenance period. Further information will be posted to UofT System Status during and/or after the upgrade as required.

This week, we were informed by Turnitin that they have been subject to a Denial of Service attack. To quote from Turnitin’s memo: “Turnitin has been the target of an extensive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack with the intent of taking down the service. A DDoS attack tries to overload the connection to our servers, rendering … Read More

Various issues related to the Portal were recently reported in The Varsity. Here’s a link to the article fyi: Out of Order: Outages, maintenance plaque Blackboard during exam season http://thevarsity.ca/2015/01/12/out-of-order/