Filtering Out Spam Messages

E-mail accounts on the life.illinois.edu server have messages passed through anti-virus and anti-spam filtering software. We offer the option to have spam and virus messages moved into a 'spam' mailbox. This will prevent these messages from crowding out legitimate mail in your inbox. If you want to check on mail that has been placed in your 'spam' mailbox, this mailbox is available via our webmail server (http://webmail.life.illinois.edu) or e-mail software configured to use IMAP. Mail older than 60 days is deleted from the 'spam' mailbox.

More information about UIUC Life Sciences e-mail accounts is available here.

If you would like for us to activate the anti-spam option for your e-mail account, please send us a message at help@life.illinois.edu.

Here are some notes on how mail is filtered -

• Messages containing viruses are automatically deleted.
• Messages with executable attachements will have the attachment quarrantined on the mail server and the text {Filename?} will be prepended to the message subject.
• Messages that receive a sufficient score from our anti-spam software have the text {Spam?} prepended to the message subject. This does not block all spam messages. We have strived to configure the anti-spam software to only mark messages which are truly spam. To capture more spam increases the risk that we would accidentally mark legitimate mail as spam.
• If you are regularly receiving spam from a certain source that is not being marked as spam, please send us the full headers from an example message and we can attempt to add the spammer's address to our spam blacklist.
• Conversely, if you find that legitimate mail is being marked as spam, we can add the sender's address to our spam whitelist.

You can also use your e-mail software to filter mail into separate mailboxes or to immediately delete it. Thunderbird and other e-mail clients offer the ability to filter mail. You could set up a filter to move mail that has a subject that begins with {Spam?} to a 'spam' mailbox on your local computer. Please contact us if you'd like help configuring your e-mail software.