Email Spam Filtering Now Available!

05/07/03

Introducing Spam Trap -- IC's new email spam filtering system

We are pleased to introduce to the campus community a new tool to help combat the amount of spam email that arrives daily. Spam Trap is an optional spam filtering system that can help identify and reduce the amount of junk email that is received in your IC email account.

If you would like to have Spam Trap filter your email, you must go to the Spam Manager website to set it up for your account.

Features of Spam Trap:

• Once set up for your account, Spam Trap assigns a spam-score to each email message as it arrives. The more typical spam elements in the message or for messages from known spam sites, the higher the score. The system considers anything that scores a 5 or higher spam. You can see the full list of tests it performs on each message at the Spam Assasin website.
• For messages it considers spam, you can have it:
• Tag the message by adding "[SPAM******]" to the beginning of the message subject (the number of stars reflect the spam score).
• Reject the message -- it will be sent back to the sender and will never appear in your inbox.
• Take no action.
• You can also specify particular sites or users to always allow or always reject as spam by using Spam Trap's whitelist and blacklist feature.

Two important things to keep in mind if you are thinking about using Spam Trap:

1. If you choose to use it, Spam Trap will not totally eliminate spam from your inbox. Some spam comes into campus in such a way that it bypasses the spam filtering system. We are working on trying to prevent this from happening, but for the moment, some spam is getting through without being seen by Spam Trap. Please also keep in mind that internal Ithaca College to Ithaca College email and email destined for off-campus does not pass through Spam Trap, and is not possible to filter for spam. You can take a look in the message headers to see if the message passed through Spam Trap or not.

We've also seen spam messages that do not contain enough of the typical spam elements to get tagged as spam, even though it does pass through Spam Trap. For those messages you could consider blacklisting the sender or domain if appropriate.

2. If you select the option to reject suspected spam, you should keep in mind that valid email messages could possibly be rejected (and not be delivered to you). We recommend that you select the "tag messages" option for several weeks to see what messages are being flagged as spam before you choose the option to reject suspected spam messages. By tagging a message as *spam* you can then easily filter and delete those messages, or use the whitelist feature to have Spam Trap always allow messages from that sender regardless of the spam score. Once you have things working the way you want, at that point you could then select the "reject suspected spam" option.

• To start using Spam Trap : Spam Manager website
• More information and instructions: What is Spam? Quick Guide
• ACCS helpdesk: x4-3282, email helpdesk@ithaca.edu if you have any questions.

We believe that you will find Spam Trap to be a very helpful tool in fighting the battle against spam.

Contributed by ACCS

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