Improved spam filters

By Jim Michael
Information Technology Services

Improved spam filters will be implemented for all campus and CVIP e-mail users on March 16, 2005.

The key changes included in this improved spam filter system are:

• The use of a filter method known as the Realtime Blackhole Lists ( RBLs) that will reject messages sent from addresses known to be sources of spam. When a message is rejected by the RBLs, the sender is notified, allowing the sender 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.

To give you some idea of the results that you should expect to see from the improved spam filters, please refer to the graph below that compares the average number of spam messages received each day by users who helped test the new filters.  You'll see that, while our old spam filters provided significant relief from spam, the new filters offer a substantial improvement.

For more detailed information on the new spam filters, and how you can customize them for use with your e-mail, please refer to the help pages prepared for the University Journal by the campus Help Desk. 
Fresno State e-mail spam filter information

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.