As of August 2006 the College no longer uses spamassassin. This document is online for archival purposes only.

The following options are available for spam scanning of your e-mail account.
See the FAQ for more information on Spamassassin.

			Turn Spamassassin off
	Whitelist an address		Blacklist an address
	Whitelist a recipient address		Change your Spam threshold
	Remove an address from a Black- or White-list

In order to access the configuration pages, you will need two things:

• A Web browser capable of 128-bit encryption. The pages listed below are on a secure server, and they will not load if your browser cannot handle the encryption. If you have problems accessing these pages, please contact the Help Desk (x7440) for help in determining your browser's encryption strength.
• Your e-mail username and password. This is the first part of your e-mail address (for example, if your e-mail address is jdoe@brynmawr.edu, your username is jdoe) and your current e-mail password. If you do not remember your e-mail password, you will need to request a password reset. To do this from on campus, visit the Account Request Form. From off-campus, e-mail help@brynmawr.edu with your BMC e-mail address and your BMC ID number.

Spamassassin FAQ

What is Spamassassin?
Spamassassin is a program that scans incoming e-mail messages for signs that they might be spam. Spam (unsolicited commercial e-mail, scams, and other potentially undesired messages) are marked with the phrase "***MAY BE SPAM***" at the beginning of the subject line before being delivered to your e-mail inbox.

If you would like Spamassassin to scan your incoming mail, you will need to activate it on your e-mail account.

How does Spamassassin know what's in my messages?
Spamassassin uses a complicated set of rules to determine whether a message appears to be spam. Some of the things which may cause a message to be flagged as spam include lines in all capital letters, multiple large images in the body of the message, frequent text color changes, certain phrases which are commonly found in marketing messages, and malformed delivery headers in the message. These rules can be customized for your own account. To view a complete list of the rules used by Spamassassin, visit http://www.spamassassin.org.

What changes does Spamassassin make to my messages?
Every message scanned by Spamassassin has certain "tags" added to it, regardless of whether or not it is believed to be spam. These are limited to the headers of the message, and include:

• X-Spam-Status: a line that appears in the e-mail headers that states whether or not the message is spam, how many "spam points" the message has, the threshold for a message to be declared spam, and the tests that Spamassassin used to make this determination
• X-Spam-Level: a line that appears in the e-mail headers that may contain information which can be used in troubleshooting Spamassassin

When a message is flagged as spam, additional changes are made:

• The phrase "***MAY BE SPAM***" is added to the beginning of the subject line.
• A report is placed at the beginning of the message body. This report details which spam tests the message "failed".
• The message is automatically placed in "plain text" mode. This means that any special formatting, such as HTML or attachments, will appear as code within or at the end of the message.

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Does Spamassassin delete spam messages?
By default, no. Spamassassin delivers all messages to your e-mail inbox unless you choose to set up filtering. You can choose to have Spamassassin place all detected spam in a special mailbox, or automatically delete detected spam. Contact the Help Desk for assistance in changing your message delivery options.

What else should I know about Spamassassin?
The sitewide settings for Spamassassin have been customized for our needs at Bryn Mawr College. Messages sent to the mass mailing lists (the class lists, undergrad, gssw, grad-as, faculty, staff, bulletins, and activities lists) will never be flagged as spam. In addition, messages from certain addresses and individuals will never be flagged as spam, since these addresses and individuals often send out messages of critical importance to the community. Your own Spamassassin preferences will override the site-wide settings for your account only (see below).

Spamassassin marks too many messages as spam. Can I adjust this?
Yes. Each message scanned by Spamassassin is assigned a certain number of points. You can adjust the number of points a message must have before it is marked as spam.

How do I stop messages from my friends from being marked as spam?
You can whitelist e-mail addresses, which means that mail from these addresses will never be marked as spam.

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How do I tell Spamassassin that messages from some addresses are always spam?
You can blacklist e-mail addresses, which means that mail from these addresses will always be marked as spam.

I am on a listserve, and messages to the list are marked as spam. How do I stop this?
You can whitelist a recipient address, which means that any message to you with that address in the "To:" or "Cc:" fields will never be flagged as spam.

I get lots of legitimate mail with particular characteristics and it is always marked as spam.
You have two options. If this mail is always from the same person, you can whitelist their e-mail address. The other option is to adjust the scanning rules so that the characteristics of these messages do not cause messages to be flagged as spam.

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