Spam - junk email

Spam is junk email.  Like unwanted advertisements or announcements that arrive in postal mail, these unsolicited messages clog delivery systems and increase the number of messages a recipient must sort through in order to find legitimate mail.  The number of spam messages sent to the Rice email system far outweighs the number of legitimate messages.  Worse, spam messages can serve as a front for malicious individuals who are attempting identity theft or fraud (email fraud is also known as phishing).  This elevates spam from being a time-eating nuisance to an actual danger for unsuspecting mail recipients.

At Rice, IT utilizes several tools and applications to reduce and manage spam sent to university email addresses.  Blacklists are used to prevent spam from entering the Rice email system.  Spam Assassin tags suspicious messages in the subject line, creating an easy, visual identifier for likely junk mail in an email inbox. DSPAM is an individual filtering tool that can identify likely spam messages and either tag them or hold them in a quarantine area for recipients to view later.  Email filters can also be applied at the local desktop level by individuals.

Phishing - email fraud

Currently Rice IT processes over a million email messages per day. Between 80 and 90 percent of the email that is processed is defined as spam and phishing (electronic scams or fraud).  Spam is defined as unsolicited bulk email similar to junk mail that you receive in the regular post.  Scam or phishing emails are generally more insidious because they attempt to elicit personal identity information or money from the recipient.  These messages use both threats and promises.  The sender usually poses as a legitimate-sounding business or organization representative, such as the Help Desk at Rice, or Chase Bank.  They may threaten to close the recipient's account if the reader does not reply and include their password or other personal information.  Sometimes, a small fee is requested with the promise of significant gain, such as "$1000s in unclaimed funds are being held for your instructions.  Send $250 to begin the process of claiming your cash." 

DSPAM - train it to recognize your spam more effectively

DSPAM is an optional spam identification and quarantine or tagging tool. You can use it three different ways: quarantine, tag, or deliver messages.

1. Quarantine suspicious messages - The spam identification tool does not have the capability to prevent delivery of messages to your Rice email account, but it CAN divert many suspicious messages into a quarantine area.  You just need to remember to review the quarantine queue at least once each week to train the tool to recognize more legitimate messages.
2. Tag suspicious messages and deliver them to your inbox - Use this feature to send all messages to your inbox, but tag suspicious messages as a prefix to their subject lines.  These messages will have a subject line that begins with ***SPAM***.
3. Deliver the message as usual but include the X-DSPAM-Result header - All messages are delivered to your inbox as usual.  Suspicious messages will include a special X-DSPAM-Result header.

Instructions for setting up and training DSPAM are found in IT Tutorials.  If you are ready to review messages in your quarantine queue, log into DSPAM now.

If spam remains a nuisance, contact the Help Desk for assistance in tuning DSPAM or other filters to more aggressively tag or quarantine suspicious messages.