What is Spam Assassin?
Spam Assassin is a mail system that uses a set of rules to scan each e-mail and to give it a score based on how likely it is to be spam. This allows you to filter out junk e-mails before they clog up your
Inbox.This method seems to be the most effective way to assist clients to deal with the amount of spam that they receive each day.
How does it work?
The UQ Mail servers use Spam Assassin to scan the contents of e-mails as they are received. Each message is rated with a "spam rating" in the message header. This rating is a number of asterisks
ranging from 0 to 40. The more the asterisks, the more likely the message is spam.
Above is an example of the e-mail headers after a message has been scanned by Spam Assassin. The circled red section is the spam score that is added. This e-mail example has received a spam rating of 4.5
which is a good indication that the message is spam (the message in this example was indeed a spam mail).
As it is very difficult to accurately determine whether a message is spam or not, the UQ mail servers will not automatically delete messages with a high spam score. To take advantage of Spam Assassin,
you need to configure your e-mail client to look for messages with a spam score above a certain threshold (we recommend a score of 5 or above).
For example, any messages with a spam score higher than 5 can be filtered to a special "spam folder" where they can be checked to ensure that there are no valid e-mails present before deleting
the folder contents.
What does not get scanned by Spam Assassin?
Any internal mail that originated from our mail servers and customers that have 'Mail Domains' with UQconnect will not be scanned and rated. Any e-mail addresses which do not end in
'@uq.edu.au',
'@uq.net.au' or
'@uqconnect.net' and
do not pass through the mail hubs, i.e. mail coming from outside of the UQ network, will be scanned and given a rating.
Who can use Spam Assassin?
People who have an e-mail address ending in either
'@uq.edu.au',
'@uq.net.au' or
'@uqconnect.net' can use Spam Assassin. These e-mail addresses all pass
through the university's mail hubs.
Guides
Please click the relevant link below assistance with the configuration of your mail client.
Note: unfortunately Outlook Express is not supported on windows based PC's as it does not support the use of message header filtering.
| Spam Assassin Setup Guides |
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For more detailed information on Spam Assassin please visit the official
Spam Assassin web site.
