What is OIT doing to improve Spam Management?
Starting the first week of April 2008, the Office of Information Technology (OIT) will be implementing more aggressive methods of combating spam on the RCI email service. Some of the enhancements will include more comprehensive scanning of messages for various characteristics of spam, as well as looking for email from known spam sources.
What is Spam?
Email threats increased 100 percent, to more than 120 billion spam messages daily. That's about 20 spam messages per day for every person on the planet. [1] Within the last six months at the University an average of 75% of all RCI inbound mail is spam.
How will you be affected?
This upgrade should decrease spam being delivered to your INBOX, and reduce the chance of having University email servers placed on blacklists from various outside sources. Due to the more stringent changes to deal with spam you are MORE likely to have false positives (i.e., wrongly classify a legitimate email message as spam) filtered into your spam folder. Therefore, it is VERY important for you to check your spam folder regularly.
We are also implementing more aggressive virus detection and filtering. The number of banned file types has increased from 41 to 52, and we will be scanning for PDFs and PUAs (Potentially Unwanted Application) attached to messages. For a complete list of these banned extensions, go to:
http://nbcs.rutgers.edu/extensions/
What you need to do to help manage spam.
Regularly check your spam folder (the default is AUTO-DELETED-SPAM, a.k.a. A-D-S) for legitimate email messages that may have been filtered out by mistake. If you cannot regularly check your A-D-S folder, you have the option of changing the deletion schedule from the default of 14 days to something longer.
If you have altered your spam filter level for your messages, please be aware that it will be reset back to the default of 5. However, you may adjust it to whatever is suitable for your account once again.
To adjust the spam settings, login to RCI Webmail (https://webmail.rci.rutgers.edu/) and follow the links to Webtools -- > Spam Filtering.
Need more assistance?
For assistance in spam filtering, please consult with your Unit Computing Specialist/Manager.
For the latest spam filtering information and how to adjust spam filtering settings for an account, go to:
http://nbcs.rutgers.edu/spam/
Also you may write to help@rci.rutgers.edu for assistance or contact the Help Desk at 732-445-HELP (4357).
[1] From InfoWorld Resources 2008 Internet Security Trends Report (03.05.08)