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Dealing With Spam at WMU

In September, 2006, the Puremessage spam and anti-virus system was actively quarantining e-mail that had a 90-100% probability of being spam. In early December, the system was set to an 80-100% probability rule to move spam messages into a quarantine area that the end-user could manage. As of September 3, 2008, the probability rule has been set to 70%.

By clicking on the URL – https://webmail.wmich.edu:8080 – you can access a Web interface where you may view the messages in your quarantine and release messages back to your e-mail client (webmail, Outlook, Netscape, etc). Any messages left in your quarantine will be purged automatically in 14 days.

If you would like to receive a daily digest message that shows what has been delivered to your quarantine, log in at the web interface above and select Options. Then, check the box - “Notify me periodically of messages that have been blocked.” Even if you do not opt-in to receive the digest message, your spam detected e-mail will still be quarantined. Messages in the quarantine do not count against your e-mail disk quota.

If you would like to be more aggressive with your spam blocking, you can implement a filter that will take 50-80% probability messages and move them to a Junk folder that is set up within your e-mail client. If you are an ECS (webmail) or IMAP user, see the Help Desk how-to Using Mail Filters in E-communication Services question number 3 for creating this filter. IMAP users will have to log in to ECS webmail to set this server side filter in order for it to take action in their IMAP client. Be sure to have a folder named Junk in your client.

Questions regarding the spam filtering system should be directed to the OIT Help Desk, 387-HELP (4357) or helpdesk@wmich.edu.