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University strategies for dealing with Spam
Level 1: Yale University's Gateway
Yale blocks messages from known spammers using a service called SpamHaus, a real-time database of IP addresses of verified spam sources. Messages from known spammers, are rejected before they hit our email server.
Statistics
To view University Spam email statistics, please visit the statistics page.
Level 2: Spam management tools
Since 2005, ITS has provided content-based, central spam detection by default for ITS email accounts.
- Messages scored as spam are moved away from your inbox to the Tagged-Spam folder on the server.
- Messages containing virus signatures are discarded.
- Note: Messages sent to yale.edu addresses are NOT processed by Spam Assassin filters.
Yale uses a product called Spam Assassin that can scan through the content of a message and filters messages based on spam-like activity. While this reduces the number of unwanted messages in your inbox, it requires you to look for false positives regularly in the Tagged-Spam folder. The recommended process for reporting false positives is to submit the full headers of any messages incorrectly filtered to the server Tagged-Spam folder to the Postmaster. You can access the "Tagged-Spam" folder by going to Yale Webmail.
Since most clients will never review email blocked at the Internet gateway or sorted at the server into "Tagged-Spam" folders, the rules used for these decisions are conservative. Extensive testing by ITS and clients has shown very few "false positives." For that reason some spam gets through the first two levels of filtering. Please note that you can easily review your own "Tagged-Spam" mail box to verify for yourself that this filter is working well for you
PLEASE NOTE: ITS does NOT back up the "Tagged-Spam" folder.
Level 3: Train email clients to recognize and manage spam
1. Use local Junk Filters: Mail clients like Eudora or Outlook have built-in spam filters that you can train to filter messages you consider spam. Clients using local filtering via Thunderbird, Eudora or Outlook will need to review their "junk" mailbox regularly as some legitimate email will almost certainly be tagged as junk and vice versa.
2. Technologically sophisticated users can create a server side filter https://config.mail.yale.edu/; these filters enable you to move or delete content you find offensive. This service will soon be available to the Medical school.
