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Spam FAQ

FILTERING

INDIVIDUAL ACCOUNTS

OPTIONS AND PREFERENCES

OTHER QUESTIONS

How much spam does the Hastings email system get?
As of May 2009, we get between 25,000 and 60,000 email a day. Only between 5% and 30% on any day of the email is legitimate. This is a better percentage than daily national averages as reported by IronPort, a Cisco subsidiary. A typical user will receive between 5 and 500 spam email a day which are filtered out by the Barracuda.

What is our spam filtering program?
We use Barracuda, a program from Barracuda Networks www.barracudanetworks.com to filter all email coming into Hastings from the outside world.

What does it filter?
Barracuda filters incoming email for unsolicited commercial email and computer viruses. In order to protect College computers from new viruses and worms, it also blocks any attachment containing a file type not typically sent to email users at a law school, e.g. *.pif, *.scr files, and executables (computer programs) which are intrinsically a source of computer viruses.

What attachments does the Barracuda not block?
The program does not filter content nor does it block word processing files, spreadsheets, pictures, or music files. The Barracuda does now scan email sent out from Hastings email accounts amd controls the rate at which an account sends out messages so we do not become  a spam relay.

How does the Barracuda filter email?
The program sorts email into four categories.

LIKELY NOT SPAM - This email is delivered directly to your inbox. A little spam will come through- we expect to catch 98% of the spam before delivery to your inbox.

MESSAGES MARKED [BULK] - Because filtering tests indicate they may be spam, these email have had their subject line amended by adding a tag of [BULK]. Some list serve and newsgroup email is properly tagged this way because it is part of a mass-mailing and shares characteristics with spam. See below for directions for 'training' the server so messages from your newsgroups and others are not marked [BULK].

QUARANTINED - Likely spam is held on the server in your account for you to inspect. Nearly all quarantined email is spam. Once a day when you have received quarantined email, the Barracuda sends you an email listing them so you can make a decision whether to have the email delivered, have the sender's email address "safe-listed" so you will receive it in the future without quarantine, or have the email deleted. See below for directions on how to access your account on the server to view quarantined email.

Quarantined email is kept for three weeks and then automatically deleted.

BLOCKED - Email which has a very high probability of being spam or which contains a computer virus is deleted. You are not notified of it's existence and cannot review it.

How accurate is the filtering?
Based on monitoring and end-user comments, the filtering is quite accurate. The biggest issue is quaranting or labeling as [BULK] list serve, newsgroup and commercial email you have opted to receive. In order to "safe-list" legitimate senders, see below for a discussion of 'training' the server.

If email is blocked, can it be retrieved?
No. It has been deleted. All that is kept is a notation in the administrator's log listing a reason for blocking it and the sender and recipient.

How does the program handle viruses and worms in email?
The Barracuda program includes an anti-virus module which scans attachments for viruses and deletes those containing virus and worms. Even if an email address is"safe-listed", email from that address will be deleted if it contains a virus.

The program also stops attachments containing file types not typically sent to law school email users, e.g. *.pif, *.scr files, and executables (computer programs) which are intrinsically a source of computer viruses in email. Attachments containing password protected ZIP files are automatically deleted.

Do I have a permanent account on the Barracuda server?
The server creates an account for you when you first receive an email from outside Hastings. In your account you can check quarantined email and change your preferences including listing email senders whose email you always want delivered to your inbox ("safe-listing" or "whitelisting" an address).

Your login name to the account is your full email address in the form your-user-name@uchastings.edu. To create a new password see below.

How can I 'train' the server to always accept email from certain correspondents?
Once you have logged into the server, use the "Whitelist/Blacklist" option under the "Preferences" tab in your Barracuda account to list correspondents whose email you always want to receive. To "safe-list" one of your correspondents, type his/her email address in the box under "Allowed Email Addresses and Domains" and hit the "Add" button. This is the same as "safe-listing" an email address at Hotmail.

We call this 'training' the server. If you are regularly 'training' the server, after a few days you should have "whitelisted" emails from your list serves, news groups and desired commercial email senders. Nearly all if not all of remaining quarantined emails will then be spam.

What notices will I get from the anti-spam server?
When email for you first goes through Barracuda, it generates a welcome email containing your username and a password to access your account on the server. Sadly the text of this welcome message is not clear as to its purpose so many users delete the email.

Daily when you have received quarantined mail, Barracuda sends you a notice. The message includes a clickable link allowing you to access your account and work with quarantined messages. The link expires after 24 hours.

How can I login to my account?
Go to http://pericles1.uchastings.edu:8000/ and put in your username (in the form your-user-name@uchastings.edu) and your password.

I do not know my account password. How can I create a new password?
To create a permanent password so you can manage your account on the anti-spam server, go to

http://pericles1.uchastings.edu:8000

Type your full Hastings email address, e.g. potterh@uchastings.edu, into the "Username" box and click the "Create New Password" button. A temporary password will be instantly emailed to you.

Using this password you can then login to your account at the above URL and create a permanent password to manage your account and view quarantined email. Login at the above URL with your username and the temporary password emailed to you. Set your own permanent password by clicking on the "Preferences" tab and selecting "Security". Enter the temporary password and your desired password twice and hit "Save Password".

We suggest bookmarking the URL so that you can access your account at any time using password you have just created, without having to wait for a Daily Quarantine email.

I clicked on the link in the notice of quarantined email but get an error message. How can I access quarantined email?
Embedded in the link is a temporary password which expires 24 hours after the email was sent. This password may have expired. You should then use the procedures in the above two questions to access your account.

You still may be able to use the link to access your account though. If the email is less than 24 hours old, the problem may be that your email client wrapped the link over two lines. Copy the first line of the link into the address bar of your browser and then copy the second line of the web link onto the end of what you have already copied and hit "Enter".

In all Windows programs, you can copy highlighted text by

a. right clicking on the mouse and selecting "copy" or,

b. going to the menu bar and selecting Edit >Copy or,

c: hitting [CNTRL] C or,

d. hitting [CNTRL] Insert.

You can paste highlighted text by

a. right clicking on the mouse and selecting "paste" or,

b. going to the menu bar and selecting Edit >Paste or,

c: hitting [CNTRL] V or,

d. hitting [SHIFT] Insert.

What are my options for dealing with quarantined email?

It's wise to check your quarantined mail once a week. Occasionally a good message is quarantined.

You can "Delete" the message or "Deliver" it - these options deal with this particular email now. You can also hit the "Whitelist" option - this delivers the email and 'trains' the server so that in the future Barracuda will automatically deliver email from that sender without quarantine or spam filtering. This is the same as "safe-listing" an email address at Hotmail.

You can also select "click here" in the daily quarantine email to go to your account on the Barracuda server.

What can I do if I access my account directly?
On this screen you can "Deliver", "Whitelist" or "Delete" any message. If you click the box to the left of the word "Date", you select all items on the page and can take these actions on a number of messages at once. You can exempt a particular email from the mass selection by unchecking the box in front of it.

What Preferences can I change in my Barracuda account?

First select the "Preferences" tab.

By choosing the "Security" option, you can change your password.

You can have all quarantined email automatically delivered in the future (instead of being held on the server for action) by going to the "Quarantine Enable/Disable" screen. If you chose to disable mail quarantine, the subject line of email which would have been quarantined will be amended by the addition of the text "[QUAR]".

You can turn off spam filtering but not virus checking in the "Spam Filter Enable/Disable" screen. In the "Quarantine Notification" area you can select among three frequencies of quarantine notifications (daily, weekly or never).  Using the Baysean database options won't improve the spam filtering under our system.

How can I change my preferences?
After you have logged in the server by clicking the link on the daily quarantine email, select the "Preferences" tab. You can also login as detailed above in the questions

What do whitelist and blacklist mean?
"Whitelist" is the standard computer industry term for a list of email correspondents whose email should always be delivered. This is the same as "safe-listing" on Hotmail. You "whitelist" addresses in your account on Barracuda.

"Blacklist" in this context has its predictable meaning: a list of people whose correspondence you never want delivered.

How do I "safe-list" or "whitelist" a sender so his/her email is not marked [BULK] or quarantined?
Use the "Whitelist/Blacklist" option under "Preferences" in your Barracuda account screen. We call this 'training' the server. If you are "training" the server, after a few days you should have "whitelisted" emails from your list serves and news groups. Nearly all of remaining quarantined emails will then be spam.

How should I use the "Whitelist/Blacklist" option?
To "safe-list" one of your correspondents, type his/her email address in the box under "Allowed Email Addresses and Domains" and hit the "Add" button. If an email from him/her has been quarantined, you can select the "whitelist" option next to one of his/her emails.

Hastings email users should very rarely use the "Blacklist" option. It is possible to add spammers' email addresses to "blacklists". But adding spammers to your individual "blacklist" or the system wide blacklist is not useful because most spammers change addresses frequently, use temporary addresses they have hijacked, or relay through an email server that should not have allowed relay. Adding these addresses to a blacklist will not prevent more spam but will burden the server with unnecessary processing and risks "blacklisting" a legitimate email address which was only temporarily were used by a spammer.

When can I check my quarantined email?
You can check your quarantined email either when you receive email notice of it or anytime by logging into the spam filtering server at http://pericles1.uchastings.edu:8000/

and entering your username (including the "@uchastings.edu" part) and your password.

I have not received an email I am expecting. What's up? How can I check for it?

First check your account for quarantined messages. However, messages from individuals are rarely quarantined.

If not quarantined, there are plenty of other possibilities. Most likely the sender made a mistake typing your address or there is a problem with the sending server. Perhaps your correspondent's server did not send out the message promptly or it has been queued for delivery somewhere. There could be a general problem on the Internet- this happens occasionally with congestion or with the domain naming service that provides email servers with information on how to find other email servers.

The Barracuda makes mistakes. With 60,000 messages a day, if only 1/10th of one percent of the messages are mis-categorized that's a 60 messages a day mis-categorized.  No anti-spam server approaches that kind of accuracy. 

You can contact HelpDesk with details including the sender's email address and approximate time and we will look into the issue for you. "Safe-listing" the sender is usually the best solution.

I want to receive an attachment of a file type the spam server is blocking. How can I get it through the Barracuda's filters?
If we have blocked a file type, we would ask your sender to send it to another email address of yours.

Why doesn't some of my email doesn't arrive at Hastings addresses?

Email from outside Hastings cannot come from an @uchastings.edu address.  For instance if you send an email using your ISP's SMTP server and use the source address as your_email@uchastings.edu, it will be blocked. It is blocked as it looks like spam. The best solution is to use OWA, Outlook, Active Sync or Entourage 2008.

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