To protect our users from viruses, worms, and other malware, the e-mail server blocks and/or quarantines certain file types that are commonly used to propagate such malicious code. These files are removed from the message and replaced with a notification that is sent to the intended recipient of the file.
Banned file extensions include: .ani .bat .ceo .cer .chm .cnf .cur .fdf .hta .jse .ico .its .ma[dfgmqrsuvw] .mhtml .pst .reg .scf .scr .sct .shb .shs .vsmacros .vs[stw] .wh[cfh] .xnk
In addition, we block and quarantine filenames containing CLSIDs, names with lots of contiguous whitespace in them, and (in most cases) repeated file extensions (for example, “somefile.zip.zip”).
If you legitimately need to send or receive these types of files, you might try putting them into a password-protected ZIP file or other archive format, renaming them to something “safe,” or distributing them via your personal home page or via the UT Webspace site.
If you receive a notice about a specific quarantined file that you feel is legitimate, please contact us to request that the file be released from quarantine. Such requests will be handled on an individual, case-by-case basis. (It is not an automated process, so please be patient while you await our reply.)
Message size limits
We also restrict the size of an email message that can be sent or received through our mail servers. Note that this size limitation is based on the total size of the entire message, including all headers and any encoding overhead; it is not based only on the size of the attachment(s) or of the message text itself.
The current size limit for a message is 50 MB.
In addition, we restrict the header size and the number of recipients per message. At present, the headers of a message may not exceed 65 KB, and a message may not have more than 700 recipients.