Spam Controls

How To Use Computer Science Spam Controls

Introduction

Computer Science uses a spam fighting mail gateway to control spam emails.

How it Works

The mail gateway analyses each incoming email and gives the message a spam score. If the score is extremely high, then the message will be quarantined, which means it is held on the mail gateway to be reviewed by the receiver. Moderately scored messages will get flagged by adding [***JUNK***] to the subject of the message and delivered. Once a day or week, the system will send an email with a summary of all quarantined spams. The email will include a web link to a site where you can review the quarantined spams and modify your personal whitelist and blacklist. The site is IP restricted to VT campus/VPN.

Whitelist

The system supports a personal whitelist and site-wide whitelist. A personal whitelisted address will deliver to you even if the message scores high. You can modify your personal whitelist two ways:

• Through the CS Intranet email controls: https://admin.cs.vt.edu/my-email/
• Using the link from the spam system daily spam report message

Contact Techstaff if have trouble editing your whitelist or have a suggestion for a site-wide whitelist entry.

Blacklist

The system supports personal blacklist and site-wide blacklist. A personal blacklisted address will always try to be quarantined. You can modify your personal blacklist two ways:

• Through the CS Intranet email controls: https://admin.cs.vt.edu/my-email/
• Using the link from the spam system daily spam report message

Contact Techstaff if have trouble editing your blacklist or have a suggestion for a site-wide blacklist entry.

Aliases and Mailing Lists

Each individual @cs.vt.edu email address is considered unique by the spam system and will have its own whitelist and blacklist. For example, if johndoe@cs.vt.edu has an alias john@cs.vt.edu then both addresses will have a unique set of whitelists and blacklists. The same applies to mailing lists.

• To modify the whitelist or blacklist of an alias or mailing list address, you will need to use the unique login link sent in the daily spam report to that specific address

Filtering

The default action for CS email is filter junk flagged messages into a folder called caughtspam You can turn off this filtering through the CS Intranet email controls: https://admin.cs.vt.edu/my-email/

Notes

• The new CS spam controls does not support an email interface, so the old spam reporting emails will no longer function: spam@cs.vt.edu, notspam@cs.vt.edu, etc.