Spam Filtering for GroupWise

By Claudia Lynch, Benchmarks Online Editor

Bulk E-mail or Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (UCE) - Spam by another name - has rapidly increased in past months according to Jason Myre, Campus Wide Networks Messaging Support Manager. Because of this, the Campus Wide Networks Computing Team is now providing bulk E-mail filtering to help you manage this type of mail better. According to Myre, E-mail that is likely unsolicited now includes the word "BULK:" before the subject of the message. 

How is this possible?

The Campus Wide Networks folks are using a program called SpamAssassin to determine if E-mail is UCE (i.e. Spam). Don't worry, no E-mail originating from a *.unt.edu address will be marked as UCE. 

There's a rule for that!

If you want to decrease the amount of E-mail coming into your GroupWise mailbox, you can create GroupWise rules to move tagged E-mail to a folder for later browsing, reading, or deleting.  If you are interested in filtering bulk E-mail, just follow the instructions provided at:  http://cwn.unt.edu/cwn/rules/spam_rule.html

* We have been writing about Spam in Benchmarks Online and the now defunct Benchmarks NewsJournal for years. Literally. In a November 2000, Network Connection article, Dr. Philip Baczewski noted that "in the early, almost prehistoric Internet days -- around 10-12 years ago -- a term was coined for E-mail sent unsolicited or to an inappropriate forum. The common name is Spam, I guess because such E-mail is unwanted and possibly unpalatable." One of Dr. Baczewski's latest missives on the topic can be found in this Network Connection article, "A New World of Spam."