CS Email Spam Filtering Policy

In an effort to cope with the many problems caused by the increasing load of email spam, we are implementing a policy of default spam filtering. Email that our spam tagger identifies as very probably spam will be deleted. Email identified as probably spam will be put in a folder called spam, then deleted after one month.

Spam filtering is configured by rules in the file /stage/sieve/cs-username. You can edit this file to customize the filtering rules.

Email in folders named spam, Trash, Deleted Messages, etc, will be deleted!

Email identified as spam will be held in an IMAP folder spam for one month, then deleted. Email that ends up in folders commonly used for trash will also be deleted after one month. Examples of such folder names are junk, Trash and Deleted Messages. If you have messages in these folders that you wish to preserve, you must move the mail to another folder.

Forwarding email

Our system for forwarding CS email has changed. Email forwarded to another address will now be checked for spam. Email that our spam tagger identifies as very probably spam will be deleted. Email identified as probably spam will be put in a folder called spam, then deleted after one month.

If we see email being forwarded to an internet address that no longer exists, we will disable forwarding to that address.

If you have any questions about this policy, or require any assistance configuring spam filtering rules, please email techstaff@cs.uchicago.edu

FAQ

Why the change?
New email server configurations being adopted by many institutions are blacklisting servers that send them a lot of spam. We cannot continue to send out unfiltered email.

Can I change the filtering rules? Can I whitelist people?
Yes. See our Filtering Spam page for details.

The service keeps blocking emails that aren't spam!
The new spam filter is fairly aggressive. There is a chance that legitimate email intended for a user could be flagged as spam. We urge all users to examine their spam folders for any messages incorrectly blocked. You must move any messages you want to keep out of the spam folder, or it will be deleted. You may want to whitelist certain senders, or change your filtering rules, See our Filtering Spam page for details.

Can I opt out of the system?
No. We must filter forwarded email to prevent other email servers from blacklisting us.

I just want to forward all my email to a different address. Do I have to check the email on your server?
No, but email incorrectly labeled as spam will be blocked and eventually deleted. Our default policy is to put email identified as spam into a spam folder on our server, instead of sending it out. We will delete email in this folder that is more than one month old. To examine this email folder, you must access our IMAP server.