Computing & Information Services

Dealing with Spam

Spam is annoying and ubiquitous. Reed takes an aggressive approach to reducing the amount of spam that you receive. There are also a number of steps you can take to tailor your experience to your personal preferences. These include:

Introduction

The vast majority of spam sent to Reed is rejected before it gets to your mailbox. For an overview of steps Reed takes to weed out spam, see http://web.reed.edu/cis/help/imap/spam_details.html.
 
Remaining email is scored for spam characteristics, using a program called SpamAssassin. Higher scores are given to messages that are more likely to be spam. You can use filters to file or discard email based on SpamAssassin scores. You can also “blacklist” known spam sources if their mail is getting by your filters, and you can “whitelist” sources of legitimate email to make sure that their email doesn’t get accidentally tagged as spam.

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Customizing your spam filters

Filters are rules that your email program can use to automatically take actions based on the contents of inbound email messages. We recommend that you set up all your filters on Reed’s servers, using the Filters feature in Webmail. These filters will then work no matter how you read your email.

Modern email programs like Thunderbird and Apple Mail have their own, built-in spam detection, called “Junk mail” controls. We recommend that you do NOT use these controls, but instead use Reed’s system and the server-based filters described here. Server-based detection is more robust. Using both systems won’t help much and can be confusing.

Reed’s default filters (which you will have unless you changed them yourself) are as follows:

  • Email with a score lower than 6 is delivered to your Inbox.
  • Email scoring 6 or higher is delivered to your spam mailbox.

You can see the SpamAssassin score of an email by viewing the full headers and looking for a line that starts with “X-Spam-Score”. (Messages that score very low won’t have this line.)

Example 1: Lowering the spam threshold

There is a gray area where some legitimate email and some spam have similar scores. If you are seeing too much spam in your Inbox, you can try lowering the score needed to have a message sent to your spam mailbox. In this example we’ll lower the threshold from 6 to 5.
  1. Login to Webmail at https://webmail.reed.edu.
  2. Click on the Vacation/Filters tab at the top.
    Vacation/Filters
  3. In the Existing Rules section, click on the SPAM link to edit the rule.
  4. The default SPAM rule should look like this:

    Default SPAM rule

  5. Reduce the number of asterisks from 6 to 5.
    5 asterisks
  6. Click on the Save button at the bottom to save the rule.
    Save

Example 2: Automatically discarding higher-scoring spam

Reed throws away spam that scores over 20. In this example we’ll set up a filter to discard all mail scoring over 15.

  1. Login to Webmail at https://webmail.reed.edu.
  2. Click on the Vacation/Filters tab at the top.
    Vacation/Filters
  3. Click on the New Rule button at the bottom left.
  4. Enter a name for the new rule in the Rule Name field.  For this example, let's call it High-Score Spam.
  5. In the Select a field drop-down box, select X-Spam-Score.
  6. In the Contains drop-down box, select Greater than.
  7. In the next drop-down box, enter 15.
  8. In the Do this: drop-down box, select Delete message completely.
  9. Check the box next to Stop checking if this rule matches.
  10. The new rule should look like this:

    Default SPAM rule

  11. Click on the Save button at the bottom to save the new rule.
  12. The High-Score Spam rule is now at the bottom of the list of rules.  Click on the up arrow next to the rule until it is above the default SPAM rule. Up arrow
  13. Your rules should now look like this:
    Existing Rules

Example 3: Automatically discarding all suspected spam

This is a risky course of action—it is quite likely that some legitimate email will score over 6. But if you are willing to risk this and never want to look through your spam, you can do it.

  1. Login to Webmail at https://webmail.reed.edu.
  2. Click on the Vacation/Filters tab at the top.
    Vacation/Filters
  3. In the Existing Rules section, click on the SPAM link to edit the rule.
  4. In the Deliver to folder: drop-down box, select Delete message completely.
  5. The rule should now look like this:

    Default SPAM rule

  6. Click on the Save button at the bottom to save the rule.

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Blacklisting and whitelisting

Whitelists allow you to keep a message from being discarded. For example, you might sign up for a daily list of specials from a website. SpamAssassin might give these messages a high score, even though to you they aren’t actually spam. You can still leave your spam filters in place, but place the "From" address for these messages in your whitelist to insure that the messages stay in your Inbox. Blacklists are just the opposite; messages from addresses in your blacklist are discarded even if they get low spam scores. Note that both whitelists and blacklists work only on the actual email address, not on the sender’s name.

Example: Whitelisting an address

Apple offers an email alert service for updates to their knowledge base. Sometimes these emails score over 6, but we want them to stay in our Inbox. These emails are always sent from the address “kbchanges@apple.com”. Blacklisting works just the same way.

  1. Login to Webmail at https://webmail.reed.edu.
  2. Click on the Vacation/Filters tab at the top.
    Vacation/Filters
  3. In the Existing Rules section, click on the Whitelist link to edit it.
  4. In the white box, enter kbchanges@apple.com.
    Whitelist
  5. Click on the Save button at the bottom to save changes to your whitelist.

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Setting expiration preferences

Email in your spam folder can fill up your quota quickly. By default this email will be automatically deleted after 30 days. You can check your settings and change them (and also set an automatic deletion for your Trash folder, if you so desire) by visiting https://myinfo.reed.edu and clicking on "Spam and Trash Expiration".

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Unsubscribing from unwanted email lists

Many organizations use email for marketing, newsletters, and so on. It is easy to wind up on these lists unintentionally. Online queries or purchases that require you to enter your email address often have a checkbox where you can sign up for “updates” or “special offers”, and it is often checked by default. Most legitimate businesses don’t want to annoy you, however, and will honor your request to be removed from the list (or “opt out”). If you get such unwanted email from a company you’ve done business with, look for the “unsubscribe me” link in the email. This is required by Federal law.

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Reporting spam

You can report spam that makes it into your Inbox by following these instructions. It is particularly helpful for us to get reports of legitimate email which has been wrongly tagged as spam (so-called “ham”).
If you have other questions or concerns please contact Computer User Services.

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