Email, Spam Control, Overview of Spam Control

Spam Control is a service that reduces the amount of spam you receive and eliminates known viruses before they reach your mailbox. As soon as you have a NetID you are automatically enrolled in the service.

Is it real email, spam, or a virus?

Spam Control uses a scoring system to determine if an incoming email sent to netid@uiuc.edu  or netid@illinois.edu is legitimate email, spam, or virus-infected. Depending on its score, the email is regarded as one of the following:

• Not Spam: The email is legitimate correspondence.
• Possible Spam: The email has questionable characteristics but could be legitimate.
• Likely Spam: The email is probably spam.
• Certain Spam: The email is definitely spam.
• Virus: The email contains a known virus.

You can find detailed information about how email messages are evaluated on the Spam Control Scoring System page.

Choosing how your spam is handled

You can choose one of five different ways for Spam Control to handle possible, likely and certain spam. (Messages containing viruses are immediately deleted, and legitimate email messages [Not Spam] are delivered to your mailbox, regardless of which preference you select).

The five ways for handling likely and certain spam are referred to as Personal Spam Policies. They are:

• Cautious: Possible, likely and certain spam is sent to your Quarantine, a server space where spam is held for 10 days.
• Cautious Plus: Possible and likely spam is sent to your Quarantine, certain spam is automatically deleted.
• Aggressive:Possible spam is sent to your Quarantine; likely and certain spam is automatically deleted.
• No Quarantine: Possible spam is delivered to your mailbox; likely and certain spam is automatically deleted.
• Cautious Plus, No Quarantine: Possible and likely spam is delivered to your mailbox; certain  and known spam is automatically deleted.

The following chart illustrates the differences in the policies:

The Cautious Plus policy is the default for existing students. New students, as of Fall 2010, will be defaulted into Cautious Plus, No Quarantine. Everyone else is in the Cautious Plus, No Quarantine policy by default. You can change which policy you are using at any time. See Selecting Your Personal Spam Policy for instructions.

Safeguarding your email

Over the past several years, Spam Control has proven to be very reliable at correctly distinguishing spam from real email. However, an occasional mistake might occur, spam might slip through the filters or, conversely, an email from your friend could get caught. Spam Control has additional safeguards if you are concerned that your legitimate email messages might be mistaken for spam.

On December 19th, Tech Services will be changing how you receive and view quarantined emails and spam digests. You no longer need a link from a digest. Use the Web Interface by opening a browser and point it to the following URL: https://go.illinois.edu/spamdigest to manage your spam account.

The Quarantine and Daily End User Digests

Some spam policies use a separate storage space called the Quarantine to hold email marked as spam so that they do not take up space in your email account. If you choose a policy that quarantines spam, please be aware that emails in the Quarantine for more than 10 days will be automatically deleted, and are not recoverable by a service administrator.

• You will have spam in your Quarantine only if you are in either the 'Cautious' or 'Aggressive' Personal Spam Policy.
• Users who have email messages addressed to them stored in the Quarantine will receive an email notification, called an End User Digest (Digest) in their inboxes.

You can view the contents of your Quarantine through daily email End User Digests, which will list all emails added in the past 24 hours. You can choose to release an email if you want to make sure it is not legitimate email. It is recommended that you review the list every day to make sure there are not any legitimate emails in your Quarantine.

To View your Quarantine Visit the Web Interface

Safe and Blocked Senders Lists

You can add your correspondents' email addresses to your Safe Senders list, which will prevent them from being marked as spam. Similarly, you can add unwanted email addresses to your Blocked Senders list.

Technology Services also maintains a Global Safe List. This allows official University communication to go through Spam Control to users' mailboxes.

Questions

• For general support please contact the Technology Services Help Desk.