St. Edward's has implemented a spam filtering application, CanIt. All e-mail is scanned for possible spam messages. Those messages meeting the criteria for spam will be tagged as spam. In your e-mail you will see messages with the subject line [Spam Alert***Spam Score]. These are messages detected as spam. A spam score is assigned to these messages. The higher the score, the higher the number of **** in the Spam Alert. It is recommended that you scan these headers to make sure non-spam messages are not being incorrectly marked.

Changing Spam Filtering Settings

If you have e-mail that is being incorrectly tagged as spam and you want to make sure that e-mail is delivered to your IN box and not your JUNK box, you can log into our spam filtering application and accept email from specific senders. You can also change overall spam filtering aggressiveness or reject email from specific senders.

To change the default setting of CanIt, which is to tag spam messages and send those tagged with a score higher than 4 to the JUNK mailbox in Zimbra:

1. Access CanIt from http://roar.stedwards.edu
2. Login with your St. Edward's University login and password.
3. Under My Filter choose one of the options to control your spam settings.
4. Filter Aggressiveness
   By default this is set in the middle. If you would like more lenient filtering, which would result in more messages that are potentially spam being sent to your IN box rather than your JUNK box, change this option by selecting a circle to the left. To make the spam filter more strict, which will result in more messages going directly to the JUNK box on Zimbra, click to the right.
5. Accept and Reject list
   If you have messages from a common domain such as nytimes.com or techrepublic.online.com that you want to receive in your IN box and not in your JUNK box you can add that domain to the Accept box. Choose "Always accept mail from" in the drop down list and then type in just the domain: nytimes.com and click on Add. You can also add a specific email address to be accepted.
   
   
   
6. Click on the Log Out button to exit.
   

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Voting Links

Voting links have been enabled on all incoming e-mail. This allows everyone to vote on whether or not a message is spam. This is the option to use if you receive a phishing e-mail. If you vote it as spam, future messages from the same source will get targeted as spam and will be sent directly to the JUNK box in Zimbra.

Every e-mail will end with 3 links for voting.

• Spam
• Not spam
• Forget previous vote

To "vote" click on the link. Your default web browser (IE or Netscape or Safari) will open to the CanIt home page. Click on the spam, non-spam or forget training button to cast your vote.

Spam Filtering Changes - August 18, 2008

In order to reduce the number of spam mail messages received by the campus community all e-mail messages marked with a spam score over five (*****) found in the subject line will automatically be moved to the Junk mailbox on Zimbra. If you use Eudora or Outlook to check your e-mail, you will never see messages with a spam score over five. If you think you are missing messages that might have been incorrectly marked as spam, log into Zimbra and open your Junk mailbox. Messages saved to the Junk mailbox on Zimbra will remain there for 30 days.

Spam Filtering Changes beginning June 2008

In order to keep St. Edward’s e-mail from being blocked by other e-mail providers, all outgoing e-mail will be scanned by our spam filter. This system is designed to prevent real spam from being sent through our servers so it is unlikely that most messages will be affected. However, any message which is rejected by the spam filter will be sent back to the sender with an incident code which the Computer Help Desk can help you interpret.

In addition, incoming e-mail with a SEU address return address that is sent from a non-SEU provider (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) will be marked as spam, but not rejected. This may result in more email being sent to a Junk mailbox so we recommend that you check the contents of your Junk box more frequently and do not set it to automatically discard messages marked as spam. Faculty using this method of sending email from off campus may want to warn their students that messages will be marked as spam or consider using Zimbra webmail from off campus.

Dealing with Spam

You may deal with the messages marked as spam in one of the following ways:

• Delete the messages if they really are spam
• Don't click on any Unsubsribe links in the email. These links are only there to confirm your email address as a valid one. Clicking on Unsubscribe will only result in more spam from that sender.
• Set up your e-mail application to filter these messages to a separate "Spam" or junk mail box.
  • Instructions for setting up Spam Filtering in Eudora
  • Instructions for setting up Spam Filtering in Outlook
  • Instructions for Spam Filtering in Zimbra
• Use the CanIt interface for setting up more advanced options and train the spam filter for your needs.

Contact the Computer Help Desk at 448-8443 for more information.