Improved spam filters coming

By Jim Michael
Information Technology Services

One of the biggest problems facing most e-mail users is the continuing stream of unsolicited e-mail (spam) appearing in their mailboxes.  Over the past several years, the ITS department has been working with the campus Information and Educational Technology Coordinating Committee (IETCC) to identify appropriate measures to help deal with this problem.  Since 2003, we've offered the SpamAssassin e-mail filter to help users control spam directed to their email accounts. 

During the fall semester, we completed the next phase in our efforts to identify additional improvements to our spam filters and we will be making improved spam filters available early in the spring semester.  You may have seen the message we sent to campus users on the BulletinBoard and Infomail lists last month announcing this change.  We'll be sending additional messages soon to provide details of the implementation schedule for this new

service. Our Help Desk is also working on updated Web pages and other support materials to ensure that they can assist you in making the best use of these new capabilities.

* The use of a filter method known as the Realtime Blackhole Lists (RBLs) that will reject messages sent from addresses know to be sources of spam. When a message is rejected by the RBLs, the sender is notified, allowing them to take action to communicate via other means and/or correct the problem that lead to RBL listing.

* An updated Web interface for our SpamAssassin service featuring easier controls to adjust the sensitivity of your spam filter and to maintain a "white-list" of e-mail addresses for messages you never want treated as spam. This new interface will also give you the option of having obvious spam messages deleted immediately.

* The implementation of an "opt-out" policy for the use of SpamAssassin. This means that everyone using our e-mail system will have spam filtering turned on by default.  Of course, you'll have the option of changing any of your spam filter settings and you can also decide to turn SpamAssassin off, if you don't want to use it.

These new services will be provided to all users of the university's e-mail system, faculty, staff and students.  We will also make them available to our CVIP subscribers.  As the problem of spam continues to evolve, we will also continue to look for additional enhancements that we can make to this service.

We are looking forward to offering these improvements and hope you'll find them helpful.  If you have any questions or concerns about these changes, please e-mail Jim Michael at jim_michael@csufresno.edu.  If you receive support for your computing needs from a school or department computer technician, you may also want to consider talking with them about how you can make best use of these new services.