Unwanted email is a common problem. The FAQs below describe what UEA is doing about it, and what you can do about it.
CanIt. The new anti-spam system
- What is CanIt?
- How does CanIt work?
- I wish to filter my spam E-mail, how do I do this?
General Questions
- What can I do to make sure I don't get spam?
- I am receiving a lot of spam, what can I do about it?
- Quite a lot of the spam isn’t getting picked up at all. Why is this?
- I am getting spam email intended for someone else. What should I do about this?
- Why does the email have my address in the sender field?
- Colleagues or students are trying to email me, but their messages are being returned because UEA is blocking them. Why is this?
- Is it possible to alter our use of Spamcop at UEA so that email from a particular server is always allowed?
- Is Spamcop really that effective? I get loads of spam in my Inbox anyway?
- I do not want my email to be filtered, and am concerned you may be rejecting legitimate emails. Can you deliver everything sent to my email address?
- Is it OK if I use my own spam blocking solutions such as Comodo?
- Can Spammers pick up my email address from the UEA Webpage?
Q. What is junk email or spam?
A. Junk email is generally considered to have one or more of a number of features:
- distributed in bulk
- unsolicited
- commercial in nature
- may contain offensive material
It incurs virtually no cost to the sender, and it is often difficult to trace the originator because the address will be false or they will use another server to send the mail, (known as a relay). Commonly called 'spam', this originally referred to multiple post bombardment of Usenet newsgroups, taking its name from the Monty Python 'spam' sketch where the word 'spam' drowns out any other conversation. Junk email is a serious problem, costing both time and money. However it is difficult to block all nuisance mail without affecting legitimate mail, some of which may resemble junk emails.
CanIt. The new anti-spam system
Q. What is CanIt?
A. Due to a large increase in the volume of spam that users have been experiencing, we are now redesigning our approach to how we deal with spam. The UEA has invested in a new anti-spam appliance called CanIt that enables users to define their own spam filtering. You can login to CanIt to set your spam preferences and view your spam trap. More information is available about How to use Canit spam filter system
A. When an email first arrives at UEA, it is checked to see if it has been sent by a server on a blacklist, i.e. from a known source of spam. If it has, then the message is discarded, unless the server is on our whitelist of permitted servers.
If the message is from a server on our whitelist or not known to be producing spam, Canit checks the contents of the message to see if it is carrying a virus or if it looks like spam. It deletes any messages with a virus, and deals with any other 'spam' messages in the way that you choose. For example it may label it as {Spam?} in the Subject line, and deliver it to your mailbox so you can check to see whether it really is spam.
Q. I wish to filter my spam E-mail, how can I do this?
A. If you are on the Exchange server then the tagging can work in conjunction with Microsoft Outlook 2003, as it is possible to set up rules that filter emails using the UEA-email headers, that are attached to the incoming spam email. See our helpsheet E8: How to set up Junk Email Filtering in Outlook 2003 for more information.
A. When an email first arrives at UEA, it is checked to see if it has been sent by a server on a blacklist, i.e. from a known source of spam. If it has, then the message is discarded, unless the server is on our whitelist of permitted servers.
If the message is from a server on our whitelist or not known to be producing spam, Canit checks the contents of the message to see if it is carrying a virus or if it looks like spam. It deletes any messages with a virus, and deals with any other 'spam' messages in the way that you choose. For example it may label it as {Spam?} in the Subject line, and deliver it to your mailbox so you can check to see whether it really is spam.
General Questions
A. It is very difficult to ensure your email address doesn’t receive any spam. (Most spam management solutions work on how to handle messages which have been sent to email addresses.)
Those producing spam work hard to find legitimate addresses to deliver their messages to. They gather up such email addresses from public places on the web such as web sites and newsgroups. If you have your email address published publicly, you need to ensure that it isn’t done so in a way that allows it to be harvested by spammers. This is difficult to avoid, but one solution is to have 2 addresses, private and public, and use only the public when you subscribe to online sites or correspond on newsgroups. The lists are sold on, so once your address is known it is very difficult to make it private again
If you’ve ever responded to a spam message, even if only to ask not to be sent any more spam, then you will have confirmed to the spammer that you have a legitimate email address, and you are likely to receive even more spam. So don’t reply to spam email.
Spammers also randomly generate email addresses for domains with large numbers of users such as hotmail.com, yahoo.co.uk, or uea.ac.uk. The size of the organisations is such that j.smith or any word from a dictionary is likely to be a legitimate email address.
Notify the IT Helpdesk if you are receiving persistent nuisance mails from a single address.
Q. I am receiving a lot of spam, what can I do about it?
A. The best thing to do with spam once it has been delivered to you is delete it. You are also strongly recommended not to respond to spam messages as this encourages those producing spam to continue to do so. Additionally the 'sent from' address used in junk mail is often false, so your reply may go to an innocent party.
Q. Quite a lot of the spam is not getting picked up at all. Why is this?
A. People producing spam are getting better at evading the means of blocking it. To avoid getting added to the blacklists, they are using networks of 1000s of compromised PCs (usually unpatched home machines) – known as ‘botnets’, each delivering only a moderate amount of spam. And to avoid getting labelled as spam by the content checkers like Spamassassin, the messages are filled with nonsense text snippets avoiding the words which Spamassassin looks out for, with the spam message included as an image which the spam filtering software cannot read.
UEA is working on different ways of controlling spam. We have noticed there has been a sharp increase in the amount of spam worldwide since June 06.
Q. I am getting spam email intended for someone else. What should I do about this?
A. It is common for spam producers to send a message to one person in an organisation and blind carbon copy to several others. This is the most likely explanation. Our advice is to delete the message, and not to forward it on to the person it appears to be intended for.
Q. Why does the email have my address in the sender field?
A. It is easy for a ‘sent from’ address to be faked, which is what often happens with junk email, as the sender wants to advertise a product but does not necessarily want to receive replies as these will often be complaints. Sometimes the sent from address will be set to the same as the sent to, so that the email will appear to come from you. However investigation of the route taken by the mail would demonstrate that it had not originated at UEA, so you would not be blamed for this.
Q. Colleagues or students are trying to email me, but their messages are being returned because UEA is blocking them. Why is this?
A. We use Spamcop, and your colleague is sending via a server on the Spamcop Blocking List [SCBL]. The server will be listed by Spamcop because it has been reported as a source of spam. If no further reports are received by Spamcop over the next 24 hours, the server will be automatically delisted, and your colleague will then be able to email you.
Your colleague could try emailing you via a different mail server (one which is not listed on the SCBL). Current students and staff can use UEA webmail to send emails.
If it is a regular problem as has been reported by some people using, e.g. Wanadoo/Freeserve/Orange, then the onus is on the ISP managing the server to track down the source of spam and block it. Your colleague could consider changing their ISP, using a different email address, or a different way of sending the email. There are web-based services which allow you send and receive email without going through your ISP's mail servers, e.g. www.mail2web.com.
Q. Is it possible to alter our use of Spamcop at UEA so that email from a particular server is always allowed?
A. This is called whitelisting. UEA will consider whitelisting a server where there is a legitimate reason for doing so, and normally would restrict whitelisting to servers within the .ac.uk community. The danger in whitelisting servers which have been blacklisted by Spamcop is that inevitably it allows more spam onto UEA's servers. Whitelisting is only applied after careful consideration as it will affect the whole of UEA, not just the individual making the initial request.
Q. Is Spamcop really that effective? I get loads of spam in my Inbox anyway?
A. We keep statistics on how much email sent to UEA is rejected every day by Spamcop. This averages about 70% of all email received. If we were not using Spamcop, you could expect to receive a 200% increase in email, all of it spam.
Q. I do not want my email to be filtered, and am concerned you may be rejecting legitimate emails. Can you deliver everything sent to my email address?
A. Yes, if you’d like to receive all email sent to your address and become a ‘spamophile’, you can opt for this in Canit. By removing spam blocking, experience has shown that most people at UEA will receive between 30 and 100 extra emails each day.
Q. Is it OK if I use my own spam blocking solutions such as Comodo?
A. Comodo requires senders to authenticate themselves to recipients by including a special word (or passcode) in a reply to an initial message. In this way, the recipient builds up a list of trusted senders, and doesn’t accept mail from anyone else.
UEA welcomes the use of measures such as this to control spam, but recommends that the uea.ac.uk domain is included in the list of trusted senders so that University communications can be successfully delivered. Rejection of University communications could leave students in breach of student regulations.
Q. Can Spammers pick up my email address from the UEA Webpage?
A. We are currently protecting email addresses on the automatically generated staff lists and people pages, and also on the news and events pages. Any further developments on the CMS will also include email protection.
It is more difficult to protect email addresses inserted into the body of CMS articles, and the requirement to do this has been recorded on the current issue log. The protect an email address, we are using the methods described on sites such as the ones below:
http://perso.crans.org/~raffo/aem/index.php
http://www.netmechanic.com/news/vol4/design_no21.htm
If the above FAQs do not answer your query then you could try the following:
- IT Helpsheets and documents
- IT Services section of this website
- Contact the relevant IT Helpdesk (see below)
There are also FAQS about other areas of IT Services.
Contact:
IT Helpdesk: extension 2345 (external callers: 01603 592345), Contact Helpdesk
