Information Technology Services

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ITS Policies - SPAM Blocking

Background:

During the FY 05-06 school year, SVSU received, on the average, 180,000 e-mails a day from off campus. At times, this volume peaked at over 200,000 a day. (These numbers do not include internal or SVSU to SVSU e-mail.) SVSU’s SPAM filter "tags" about 75% of this incoming e-mail as SPAM, about the national average at universities.

During FY 06-07  incoming e-mail peaked at 1,400,000 messages a day.  As a result in late April of 2007 SVSU expanded its SPAM filtering to include Bayesian inference logic.  This reduced the amount of e-mail accepted from 15% down to between 5% and 8 %.

 
SPAM Blocking

  1. On August 12th, 2006, SVSU began blocking & discarding "verified" SPAM.
  2. On September 1st, 2006 SVSU began blocking "probable" SPAM.
  3. On June 18th, 2007, SVSU adopted a policy of masking faculty and staff e-mail addresses from off-campus quires.  This will stop SPAM bots and individuals from harvesting e-mail addresses for SPAM usage.  This policy affects both departmental web pages and the web-based directory lookup.  The masking will allow an off campus users to send an e-mail to an employee but not actually see the e-mail address.

Personal Controls and Reporting:

  1. SVSU treats incoming SPAM just like we treat an incoming e-mail with a virus; we will discard it before it gets inside. The SPAM filter software will be dynamically updated by the vendor, just like our anti-virus software.

  2. SVSU will capture a log of the sender ("to"), the recipient ("from") and the subject line. We will not capture the message itself.

  3. Faculty, staff, and students will be able to request a daily log of blocked messages. To register click on: start or stop the daily log

  4. Members of the campus community can develop a personal exception list of senders that will pass thru the SPAM filter, called "white listing."

    1. Faculty and staff who wish to develop a personal "white list" should contact the ITD lab for the 15 minute training session.

    2. Students who wish to develop a personal "white list" should contact the STC for the 15 minute training session

    3. If a staff or faculty member can justify globally "white listing" an e-mail source please e-mail your justification to
      Support@svsu.edu       .  ITS staff will work with you to ensure the narrowest white-listing will occur. 
  5. Members of the campus community can use personal SPAM control settings that are more restrictive than the University settings.

    1. Faculty and staff who wish to use more restrictive SPAM controls should contact the ITD lab for the 15 minute training session.

    2. Students who wish to use more restrictive SPAM controls should contact the STC for the 15 minute training session.