UNC-CH Information Technology Services

ITS upgrades spam filter to give users more control

The University’s new spam filter has just gotten even better - ITS Messaging has implemented added features to promote more aggressive spam filtering and allow each customer to choose how they review possible spam messages.

“It will give people several options for managing spam, boosting their productivity while ensuring that mail is handled according to their wishes,” said Judd Knott, assistant vice chancellor for IT Infrastructure and Operations.

The new filter, which launched last November, eliminates approximately 98 percent of spam sent to the central ITS e-mail system. All messages are analyzed by the spam filter and assigned a spam score. The score ranges from 0 (not spam) to 100 (spam). The score that a message receives is used to classify it as “certain spam,” “possible spam” or “not spam.” The default option is to delete certain spam (messages with a spam score of 95-100) and deliver all other messages.

To manage spam, users can log into the spam system and choose from several options, including Tag and Forward, Standard Quarantine, Extended Quarantine and Aggressive. Based on what policy setting customers choose, they may receive possible spam messages in their inbox, or receive a digest e-mail listing quarantined messages that have been classified as possible spam.

“One significant difference that you will see if you choose a ‘quarantine’ option is that you will now begin to get message digests twice daily,” Knott said. “These digests are HTML messages that will list the new messages in your spam trap and give you options to view a message, release a message to your mailbox, add the sender to your safelist, or identify the message as not spam.”

For more information on the new spam filter and how to choose from the new settings, visit http://help.unc.edu/5761.