Managing your Junk E-mail folder
As with any folder, IMS Users must subscribe to the Junk E-mail folder to view its contents. Because only IMAP uses the Junk Mail filtering reliably, the folder will not be visible to POP3 users. However, those users can use Webmail or an IMAP client to view it if desired.
The mail server will expire the contents of the Junk Mail folder in 28 days -- IMPORTANT: users are responsible for checking their Junk E-Mail folder for messages incorrectly identified as spam.
Once per week, the Exchange server will also expire messages older than 28 days and will move the messages into the user's deleted items folder. It will also send a short mail message indicating how many messages have been moved.
As we all know from the regular offers we get for instant wealth from distant shores and unnatural enlargement of body parts, despite all of these defenses, some spam still gets through. We estimate that PureMessage is detecting about 90% of the actual spam that gets past the blocking. We are currently evaluating alternatives to PureMessage to see if any of its competitors might do a better job.
What You Can Do About Spam:
Keep your email address off the spam radar
- Don't post your address on a publicly searchable web page if you can avoid it. (It's good practice for departments and organizations to use functional rather than personal addresses.)
- Only give out your email address to reputable organizations with good privacy policies (yes, you should read the privacy policies)
- For all other sites, if you must give out an email address, use one you don't care about (a free one from a service like hotmail for example).
- Don't ever reply to spam or use the "option" to unsubscribe -- that just tells the spammer they have found a real person willing to read what they are sending. (See http://www.spamhaus.org/removeisformugs.html .)
Protect your PC from viruses and malware
Spammers want to infect your PC so they can get all of the email addresses in your address book, and so they can use your PC as a "zombie" to send out more spam. By following good security practices, you are protecting your friends and your community as well as yourself.
Report untagged spam
Sophos encourages its customers to send any missed spam back to them; this helps them improve the PureMessage filtering rules. Send the offending email with full mail headers to spamreports@drexel.edu, which automatically forwards on to Sophos.
About full mail headers: Most email clients only display the To:, From:, Date: and Subject: lines of the headers. However, what we don't normally see as email recipients is the path which the email followed from its original SMTP outbound server to reach our inbound mail server. This header information is critical for the spam detection effort. (SpamCop is a public site dedicated to helping rid the net of the spam nuisance. Use the link above to get the scoop on where to find this header info for your particular mail client.) Send the header info to spamreports@cabrini.edu.
Note: To report other types of network abuse, such as Denial-Of-Service attacks, compromised computer connections from outside Drexel, or other unauthorized use of network resources, use Abuse@cabrini.edu.
Block automatic display of images
Unwanted, disturbing images are a particularly upsetting aspect of spam. Automatically loading "images" can also trigger malicious software.
For web-based email clients such as CabriniOne and webmail, your main defense is to only open email from recognized sources.
If, however, you need to open emails from people you don't know, then you need the additional capabilities that desktop email programs offer. The Drexel IRT mail supports Outlook and Outlook Express (for Windows), and Entourage and Apple Mail (for Mac). These programs all offer the ability to turn off automatic image display and/or automatic loading of remote images. For instructions on setting up these programs to work with the email servers, see Email-help.htm .
Using spam-filtering software on your own computer
If you are really frustrated with all of the spam in your inbox, then you may want to invest some time in setting up and training spam-filtering software on your own computer. Outlook, Entourage and Apple Mail all have built-in spam filtering capabitilies that you can choose to turn on. There are also add-on spam filtering products you can install.
We (ITR Help Desk) are still exploring these options and do not have any specific instructions or recommendations yet.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. The email I sent to my colleague at hotmail (Comcast, yahoo, AOL, ...) was rejected as spam!
Occasionally outside companies -- sometimes even some of the major ones who should know better -- get too aggressive in their spam blocking lists and reject mail from perfectly fine servers such as ours. If this happens to you, please send the email with the bounce message to us at itrhelp@cabrini.edu, and email administrators will work with the outside service to get the problem fixed. You could also ask your colleague to notify their service of the problem.
Q2. Why is there tagged spam in my inbox?
Tagged spam (subject starting with [SPAM:XXXXXXX) should always go straight to the Junk E-mail folder. We've seen some cases in Outlook where this is not happening automatically. To solve this problem, please follow our instructions for creating a rule.
This is especially important for people who use a hand-held device (such as a Blackberry or a Treo) to receive email directly. No one wants to be notified of each incoming piece of spam.
Q3. A real piece of email was sent to Junk E-mail!
Case 1: the server-side filter goofed. In this case, you'll see the tell-tale [SPAM:XXXXXXX tag in the message subject. While the rate of "false positives" is very, very low at the 70% setting, every once in a great while we do see a non-spam item falsely tagged and filtered into the Junk E-mail folder. For this reason we strongly recommend you glance at this folder at least once every 28 days so that you can catch and rescue any such error. Please also send the incorrectly tagged email (with full mail headers) to consult@drexel.edu, so we can try to prevent the problem in the future.
Case 2: your local filter is at work. If the wrongly filtered item is not tagged (that is, the subject does not start with [SPAM:XXXXXXX), then the server-side filtering is not the cause. Rather, this is an indication that some additional spam filtering is happening within your email program, even if you didn't realize it. Recommendation: turn your local filtering off, or spend the necessary time tuning it and checking the results.
