Creating Spam Rules in Outlook 2003
Our collective ability to use email efficiently is being eroded by unwanted, offensive, and unsolicited commercial email. Email users are bombarded with this spam everyday, but you can take some steps to help ease the annoyances.
The College of Engineering and Computing uses a Barracuda Spam Firewall to classify email from the Internet or elsewhere on campus as either potential spam, spam, or not spam (ham). Potential spam is marked in the subject line with a [POTENTIAL SPAM] tag and email that is almost certainly spam is marked with a [QUARANTINE} tag. Email that is not spam is left alone. E-mail with viruses or an extremely high probability of being spam is blocked outright, but if you notify helpdesk at engr.sc.edu quickly enough, we can retrieve a blocked message if there was a mistake in classification.
If you use an @sc.edu mail alias, email sent to it is being filtered through the anti-spam systems at UTS running SpamAssassin and using McAfee's virus scanning engine. SpamAssassin allows personalized filtering by assigning all emails a SpamScore in the header of the email. The score is represented by a repeated lowercase 's' appending "X-SC-MailScanner-SpamScore:" in the message header. You specify what level of spam you wish to filter.
This tutorial will show you how to setup rules in Outlook to automatically move these emails for you into designated folders. There are several ways to implement these rules. The following instructions are our most recommended approach. NOTE: There is no way to completely eliminate spam, but you can use several methods to help prevent it. After implementing these rules, some spam will still come through to your mailbox, and false positives may be filtered into your spam folder. You need to periodically check your spam folder to make sure that there are no false positives.
CREATING ANTI-SPAM RULES
Before you begin creating the rule, you must create a folder in your personal folders. (Please see Mailbox Maintenance for creating personal folders)
- Open Microsoft Outlook and create a folder in your Personal Folders named Spam.
- Follow the steps below for your appropriate version of Microsoft Outlook.
Outlook 2003
- Open Outlook 2003, and select Tools on the menu bar, and Select Rules and Alerts...
- In the Rules and Alerts window, create a new rule by clicking New Rule
- In the Rules Wizard window, select Start from a blank rule radio button , make sure Check messages when they arrive is highlighted, and then click Next.
- In the Step 1 list box, scroll down the list and Check the check box for the "with specific words in the message header" condition.
- In the Step 2 list box, click on the specific words link.
- Type [POTENTIAL SPAM] into the Search Text window and click Add. Then, type [QUARANTINE], click Add, and then and OK.
- Click Next in the Rules Wizard window.
- Now you will select where you want the Spam to go. Check the move it to a specified folder check box. Then, click on specified in the bottom window.
- Select Spam in your personal folders, and click OK. Then click Next.
- The next part is for exceptions. Having exceptions may be helpful for not filtering false positives, but is not required. Click Next.
- You may now select Run this Rule now on messages already in "Inbox" to go ahead and filter your existing email. Make sure that turn on this rule is checked. Click Finish.
- If you selected to move the spam to a personal folder, you will be prompted with a client-only message, just hit OK to continue.
- Once you are back in the Rules and Alerts window, make sure your new rule is checked and hit OK.
NOTE: This is a client-only rule which means that the process will run only when outlook is running.
Be aware, some spam will still make it to your inbox. Also be aware that some of your email may be unintentionally sorted into the spam folders. Be sure to check the folder before deleting the eimails.
SpamAssassin
As of 2/2006, the following may or may not apply to you - for example, if you have an e-mail address "YOURUSERNAME@sc.edu" in addition to your engineering e-mail address, you could be using University Technology Service's SpamAssassin spam tagging service.
For more information on spam filtering with SpamAssassin, click here.
Mail Server
The college uses Microsoft Exchange Server 2000 running on a Dell 6450 dual Pentium III Xeon with approximately 236 gigabytes of storage.
Please read and follow the E-mail Policy and Guidelines.
Forwarding
By default all members of the Engineering college receive a mailbox. However, if you already have an established mailbox somewhere else you may want to forward your Engineering mailbox to that mailbox. If you choose to setup forwarding you will still have a mailbox with the college, but the e-mail sent to it will be forwarded to the other mailbox you specify.
The following link will allow you to enter a forwarding address. You will first have to login with your Engineering username and password: I want to set, change, or remove my email forwarding address.
Storage Limits
It is very easy to let your mailbox get out of hand and quickly fill up and exceed your storage limits. There are two simple methods that you can perform to prevent this: Personal Folders and Archiving. In the mailbox maintenance tutorial, you will learn how to check your current mailbox size, trim the size of your mailbox down, and use Personal Folders or Archiving.
| Every mail account has a storage limit. |
Students
(megabytes)
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Employees
(megabytes)
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| Issue Warning |
22
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95
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| Prohibit sending mail |
N/A
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N/A
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| Prohibit sending and receiving mail |
25
|
100
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Access
You may access the mail server in many ways locally and remotely. For local access we recommend using Microsoft Outlook which is installed by default in the Windows computer labs. See your IT department if you are experiencing installation or configuration issues.
For remote and off campus access see the chart below. Choose an access method and click the client for instructions on configuration. If the client you want to use is not listed see the instructions for the chosen access method to find out what information is needed. The parameters for a specified method are the same regardless of the client, usually only the client screens are different. See your client's instructions for further information.
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Remote Access Methods and Clients
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|
EXCHANGE SERVER
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POP3 and SMTP
|
IMAP
|
WEB BROWSER
(requires 128 bit SSL)
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|
|
|
|
|
|
|
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|
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Setting up Spam Filtering Rules
Our collective ability to use email efficiently is being eroded by unwanted, offensive, and unsolicited commercial email. Email users are bombarded with this Spam everyday, but you can take some steps to help ease the annoyances.
Here on campus, email from the internet is being filtered through a pair of anti-spam systems at CSD running SpamAssassin and using McAfee's virus scanning engine. SpamAssassin allows personalized filtering by assigning all emails a SpamScore in the header of the email. The score is represented by a repeated lowercase 's' appending "X-SC-MailScanner-SpamScore:" in the message header. You specify what level of spam you wish to filter. This tutorial will show you how to setup rules in Outlook to automatically move these emails for you into designated folders.
There are several ways to implement these rules. The following instructions is our most recommended approach. NOTE: There is no way to completely eliminate spam, but you can take several methods to help prevent it. After implementing these rules, some spam will still come through to your mailbox, and false positives may be filtered into your Spam folder. You need to periodically check your spam folder to make sure that there are no false positives.
The College of Engineering and Computing has provided a service to help you deal with spam. To help you with our Barracuda Spam Firewall, we've created a FAQ.
Creating Anti-Spam Rules
Before you begin creating the rule, you must create a folder in your personal folders. (Please see Mailbox Maintenance for creating personal folders).
- Open Microsoft Outlook and create a folder in your Personal Folders named Spam.
- Follow the steps for your appropriate version of Microsoft Outlook.
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