Miami’s New Spam Firewall Service Puts You in Control of Your E-mail
On 11/26/06, IT Services put into place a new Spam Firewall Service from Barracuda Networks to help students, faculty, and staff combat the continuing glut of spam e-mail. This service is user-customizable and will help reduce the load on Miami’s e-mail servers. It allows you to keep suspected spam out of your Inbox, but still provides an opportunity to review it before it is deleted.
Here’s how it works
The Spam Firewall Service is positioned in front of Miami’s incoming e-mail server. It checks incoming messages for viruses and spam-related content and assigns each message a score from 0-9. The higher the score, the more likely the message is spam.
Based on the score assigned to a message, and your spam settings, one of four actions will occur:
Block |
The message is dropped at the Spam Firewall.
This is the action recommended for e-mails with high scores that you are confident are really spam and that you don’t wish to review. Miami has disabled this option, so that you can review all e-mail, then set it to the value of your choice. |
Quarantine |
The message is retained in your Quarantine Inbox on the Spam Firewall and available for review for up to 14 days.
This is the action recommended for e-mails with spam scores you are fairly confident mean the messages are really spam but want to be able to double-check. Miami has set an initial default of “6” for the quarantine score with plans to drop the score to “5” on 12/17/06. Messages with a score at or above the quarantine score and below the block score are quarantined. You can elect to receive a daily quarantine summary via e-mail. |
Tag |
The message is delivered to your mailbox with “{spam?}” added at the front of the Subject line.
This is the action recommended for e-mails with spam scores you aren’t yet confident mean the messages are really spam. You can create a filter in your e-mail application to automatically move these messages to a Spam folder for review or keep them in your In-box. Miami has set an initial default of “3” for the tag score; messages with a score at or above the tag score and below the quarantine score are tagged. |
Deliver |
The message is delivered to your mailbox.
This is the action recommended for e-mail you are confident you want to receive based on the spam score. Based on Miami’s initial default settings, this action will be taken for messages with a score less than “3”. |
User customization
By adjusting your spam settings, you decide what action gets taken on e-mail messages based on spam score. You can also add e-mail addresses to your ‘Whitelist’ to ensure that messages from specific senders are always delivered, regardless of spam score. The goal is to, over time, fine-tune your settings and add to your ‘Whitelist’ so that the e-mail you want to receive is delivered and the e-mail you don’t want to receive is either quarantined or blocked.
To adjust your spam settings, add to your ‘Whitelist’, and view your quarantined mail, log into the Spam Firewall Console at https://spamfirewall.muohio.edu
For more information on the Spam Firewall
Detailed information on the Spam Firewall Service is available in the Miami Knowledge Base (http://kb.muohio.edu) – just search for “Spam Firewall Service”. For further assistance, please contact the IT Services Support Desk at 513-529-7900 or supportdesk@muohio.edu.
Half-hour demonstration/Q&A sessions were held on all three campuses the week of 11/27 and will also be held in January. Several January sessions have already been scheduled for the Oxford campus:
January 10 at Noon
January 11 at 8:30 am
January 17 at 3:30 pm
These sessions will be held in 212 MacMillan. |
