This spring, we are taking steps to limit the spread of spam and phishing emails sent to campus recipients. Beginning May 12, 2025, we will enable new default email sending limits on all UW–Madison Microsoft 365 accounts.
Who is impacted?
If you send more than 500 email messages per day from a UW–Madison Microsoft 365 account, you could be impacted by this change.
What are the new limits?
On May 12 we will introduce 2 tiers of default sending limits based on your role on campus:
- 2,000 email messages per day: All paid faculty and staff accounts
- 500 email messages per day: All other types of accounts (students and affiliates)
Update (March 26, 2025): Service Accounts will be exempt from sending limits in the initial rollout.
What if I need to send more emails?
Some campus senders will be pre-approved for an exception based on their spring 2025 sending habits. We notified these individuals via email on Wednesday, April 23.
People who aren’t already pre-approved for an exception but with a business need to send more than their default email limit can request an exception up to the 10,000 message per day Microsoft limit. To request an exception, please fill out the exception request form.
Why are we changing the default limits?
Our goal is to reduce the number of spam and phishing messages sent to the university community. The default Microsoft limit of 10,000 messages per day is frequently abused by malicious senders who use compromised UW–Madison accounts to email the campus community. Most UW–Madison Microsoft 365 accounts send only a handful of messages per day.
Our intention is to introduce reasonable sending limits for people who don’t normally send a lot of mail without preventing legitimate campus communication.
Questions?
For more information about email sending limits, see our KnowledgeBase article: Email/Calendar Maximum Recipient Limits.