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====== Spam Control and Deterrence ======

===== What to do about Spam =====
  * We do make best effort to prevent spam sent to you from being delivered
  * There's not much we can do to prevent attempts to send it to you; we can't follow up and investigate individual messages.
  * There's a lot more information at the OIT Spam information page and at CAUCE (Coalition against Unsolicited Commercial Email) 

===== Greylisting and blacklists =====

We run the OpenBSD [[http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=spamd&sektion=8|spamd]] service to prevent or delay message delivery from suspect servers. In addition, systems which attempt to send messages to nonexistent accounts or defunct physics hostnames are temporarily blacklisted. 

===== Spam Filtering =====

We also run the SpamAssassin filter on all incoming messages to our mail system. SpamAssassin simply assigns each message a "score", based on the content.
  * Messages with a score of 5 or less are left alone
  * Messages with a score between 5 and 8 have the text ****SPAM added to their subject line befrore being delivered.
  * Messages with a score over 8 are rejected (our system refuses to deliver them to you). 

==== Custom Filters ====

You can change settings within your account to take further action based on the spamassassin score, such as move messages to a different folder, or even delete them completely.

These settings are made within the Physics webmail system. As an example, let's say you want to filter those messages with scores with 6 or higher, so they are placed into a separate folder instead of your INBOX.

  * After logging in to the webmail system, click on **Filters**
  * Click on **Add a New Rule**
  * Under Condition change the first drop-down box which says **To: or Cc** to **X-Spam-Level**
  * In the text box after contains enter <code>******</code> (that is, 6 stars)
  * Under Action choose **Move message into** and select a folder name as the destination.
  * Under **Additional actions**, check **STOP: If this rule matches, do not check any rules after it.**
  * Click **Add New Rule**

==== Understanding SpamAssassin Scores ====

You can see the set of rules which triggered a spam tag for a particular message in the header "X-Spam-Status", and the list of SpamAssassin's default scores can be found here: [[spam_default_scores]]