SPAM @ VU
Spam is a very serious email problem. Spam can compromise the security of the network and adversely impact email systems and end-users. Over 4 million email messages are targeted at the University everyday. It's estimated that over 90% of these email messages are Spam.

UNIT’s processes for filtering out Spam that is delivered to your mailbox continuously evolves and improves, while also ensuring reliable delivery of legitimate messages. UNIT is committed to reducing Spam by using multiple levels, or layers, of filtering solutions. These levels interact by assigning each incoming email message a Spam probability score or “Spam score” of 0-100%.  The higher the Spam score, the more likely the message is Spam.
 

HOW DO WE HANDLE SPAM AT VILLANOVA?

We have multiple layers of filtering technology to combat SPAM.
 

LAYER 1: TOP LEVEL SPAM FILTERING

• The first level of Spam filtering is a process that simply rejects, or drops, messages from globally known Internet spammers. UNIT subscribes to Internet Remote Blacklists (RBLs), which handle the real-time blocking of nearly 3.4 million of the daily messages targeted at the University. These messages have a very high Spam score (99-100%), and never make it onto the University’s network. Of the remaining 600,000 email messages, 60% are marked as Spam.
   
• Incoming email messages that have a lesser Spam score (0-59%), and are not routed to the quarantine server, are many times still unsafe for direct delivery.

LAYER 2: SPAM QUARANTINING
Incoming email messages that make it onto the University’s network are always aggressively checked and rechecked for the probability of being Spam. But, previously, if messages were considered Spam, they were “tagged and passed,” meaning that you were notified of the messages Spam score, but they still were delivered.

• The latest improvement to UNIT’s Spam filtering toolkit is called Spam quarantining. At this level, any suspected messages with a lesser, but still high, Spam score (60-98%), are now directed to a separate quarantine server. The Spam quarantining process will notify you if you have messages that are routed to the quarantine server. A single daily email, called a “daily digest,” is sent to you, listing each suspected message and its Spam probability.
   
  • Using your daily digest, you will have the ability to inspect what email messages have been quarantined for you, and control what or what not gets delivered, and also see if you have any “false positives,” legitimate messages scored as Spam.
  • Options available to you include delivering any Spam messages you may want to keep to your Outlook Inbox folder, blocking or approving senders, or taking no action, where, after 14 days, Spam messages expire from the quarantine server.
  • WHY SPAM QUARANTINE?
    • The value of Spam quarantining for you is that incoming messages suspected of being Spam are not passed directly onto you, cluttering up your mailbox; these messages are deflected to a separate server.
    • Spam quarantining value for the University’s email server is a significant reduction of Spam messages being delivered to it on a daily basis, needlessly taxing its processing power and expensive storage resources.
    • With Spam quarantining, it’s estimated that nearly 240,000 of the remaining “non-legitimate” email messages are now off-loaded to the quarantine server, and not directly delivered to Villanova’s email server.
    • 240,000 suspected Spam email messages (at an average size of 20K), represents nearly 5Gbs of email message data will not be delivered to the email server, but now off-loaded to the quarantine server everyday.

  Expected rollout for Spam quarantine is summer of 2008.
  
  LAYER 3: OUTLOOK/OWA
  Through the interaction of email server anti-spam processes and default UNIT-configured Junk E-mail filtering settings on your Outlook client or OWA, messages considered still to be Spam, will be delivered to you, but directed into your Outlook Junk E-mail folder.

  • Incoming email messages rechecked at this layer, after passing the rigorous checkpoints of Spam quarantining, email server anti-spam processes and default Outlook client/OWA Junk E-mail filtering, will then be delivered to your Outlook Inbox folder.
     
  • Please remember to routinely check your Outlook Junk E-mail folder for any messages you may want to keep, and not change default Outlook client/OWA Junk E-mail filtering settings (making changes may impact the delivery of the messages).