What Can OIT's Software Do?

This software has been implemented in response to the increasing volume of unsolicited commercial e-mail, and numerous complaints from faculty, students, and staff. OIT estimates that 50 percent of the email coming to the university mail servers is spam. This is approximately 150,000 email messages of the 300,000 that arrive on campus daily.

The spam flagging and filtering software works by comparing the signatures of email messages arriving from external sources against a list of signatures of known, previously reported spam. If the signature matches that of previous spam, the message is placed in a Spam folder in your email account. If there is no match, it will be placed in your Inbox . This will decrease the amount of unsolicited mail you receive and make your Inbox much easier to manage. Please remember that the filtering process is non-intrusive: messages are not deleted, blocked or censored. Tagged spam is still delivered, but it is pre-screened for you.

Why don't we just block or delete spam?

Because there is currently no technical way to correctly identify all spam, we cannot guarantee that we would not be deleting mail from legitimate sources.

Am I 100 percent spam free using OIT's software?

Our filtering software filters approximately 90 percent of incoming spam. This means that some spam may still end up in your Inbox. When this happens, please do not forward these messages to OIT or the postmaster.

What if the spam filter tags a message that is not spam?

In rare instances, our spam filtering software will incorrectly filter an email from a legitimate source, and place it in your spam folder. These incorrectly filtered e-mail messages are called false positives . If you find a false positive, please send the message subject line and the sender's address only (not the entire message) to false-positive@oit.umass.edu. We will notify the software company.

If you encounter problems, submit an online Help Request.
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Contact the OIT Help Desk at 545-9400.