Email, Spam Control, Spam Scoring System
This page describes how Spam Control identifies and tags spam.
How email messages are tagged
Technology Services Spam Control uses a statistical model based on thousands of attributes such as language in the subject and body, the origination of the message, and information in the message's headers to evaluate each message sent to netID@illinois.edu. Depending on its attributes, each message is "tagged" with a score from 0 to 100. The higher the number, the more likely the message is spam. You can see the tagged score by viewing the 'full headers' of your email message.
Spammers constantly change how they send spam in order to deceive anti-spam programs. Spam Control updates its scoring attributes continually to keep pace with emerging spam threats.
Note: Technology Services receives constant updates from Spam Control's software vendor on global emerging spam threats, allowing us to quickly and accurately identify the worst spam servers. Using a practice known as connection blocking, we restrict these servers' communication with our campus mail server, making it less likely that spam can end up in your mailbox. Because these spam messages are blocked before they are even sent, they are not scored and processed by Spam Control.
Your Personal Spam Policy is comprised of your chosen spam management options. You can choose a Personal Spam Policy that will automatically set the threshold for a message to be regarded as spam. The Cautious, Cautious Plus, Aggressive, and No Quarantine policies use the following thresholds:
| Score | Regarded as | Definition |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 49 | Not Spam | The email is legitimate correspondence |
| 50 to 79 | Possible Spam | The email has questionable characteristics but could be legitimate. |
| 80 to 98 | Likely Spam | The email is probably spam. |
| 99 and 100 | Certain Spam | The email is definitely spam. |
So what does this mean?
The spam policy you choose determines how you what suspicious spam messages you see.
- Email with a score >98 will certainly get discarded...unless you safelist the sender
- Email with a score >80 will be 'likely spam'.. and discarded by aggressive policies, or quarantined by others
The Cautious, Cautious Plus, Aggressive, and No Quarantine polices will either quarantine, or delete spam automatically for you.