The mailserver uses many different techinques to try to identify spam. The
result is that a score indicating the likeliness that the message is a spam is
assigned to each received message.
The messages with extremely high scores are discarded, the ones with fairly high
scores are marked as spam and filed in a special mailbox named spam while the
messages with low scores are delivered to your INBOX.
The messages in the spam mailbox are deleted automatically after one week.
The service that files the spam in the special mailbox can be disabled if you
do not like it. To disable it you have to delete the mailfolder spam (from
within you preferred mail client). If you disable this service all the spam
will still be marked as such, but it will end up in your INBOX.
If you want to re-enable the filing service it is enough to recreate the spam
folder (see also advanced usage).
Besides the usual spam tagging techniques mentioned above, the mailserver
also implements a new antispam technique called
greylisting.
It is a very effective technique against spam, but in the beginning
it may delay legitimate mails by a few minutes (~5-10). It is activated by
default on all accounst, but it can be disabled on request, just send me an
email if you want to disable it for your account.
In order to ensure that your mail clients are configured correctly, please
follow the instructions below (choose the one that applies).
The webmail interface is still available, but has a new address.
The new one is:
http://www.bartol.udel.edu/webmail
The user manual can be found here.
When connecting to the above website a pop-up window will appear saying 'Unable
to verify the identity of wiki.bartol.udel.edu ...'
This issue will shortly be solved, but for the time being please just click OK.
The Mail Delivery Agent used by the mailserver understands extended addresses, i.e. addresses of the type username+extension@bartol.udel.edu, and it delivers messages for such address to the mailbox named extension if it exists or, if it does not, to the normal INBOX mailfolder.
Extended addressing is the mechanism that powers the spam filing service. The spam tagging software, when the spam score is above a predefined threshold and the message is marked as spam, changes its envelope recipient and delivers it to user+spam@bartol.udel.edu . In this way if the spam folder is present it files the spam in that folder and if not it saves it in the default mailbox (INBOX).
For example if you subscribe to the foobar mailing list using the address user+fooml@bartol.udel.edu you will still receive all the messages and if you create a mailfolder named fooml (from within your preferred mail client) then all the mails from the mailing list will automagically go the new mailbox.
Last updated: 05 Mar 2008 - Daniel De Marco