Spamtrap

Spam is unsolicited mass-mailed email, usually containing an advertisement. Spammers send their messages to large numbers of addressees, often obtaining those addresses without the permission of the address owner. Spam tyically contains offensive and unwanted material, or even viruses and other malware.

Ithaca College has a spam filtering system in place for the campus community called SpamTrap. SpamTrap is an optional filtering system that can help identify and reduce the amount of junk email received in the IC account. Internal Ithaca College-to-Ithaca College email and email destined for off-campus do not pass through SpamTrap, and are not filtered.

Settings

By default, all incoming email is checked against these filters. These filters use logarithms to try and determine whether email is spam. If these filters think an email is spam, by default, it is tagged as such when it reaches the inbox. The user can then determine what to do with the message. Suspected spam can also be rejected before it ever reaches the inbox. If this option is used, legitimate email may be tagged as spam and rejected. Users can also whitelist or blacklist senders using SpamTrap.

ITS recommends that suspected messages be “tagged” for several weeks before the default settings are changed.

Users can either log directly into SpamTrap or access it through Options in Webmail.

Effectiveness

Spam filtering is not 100% effective. By choosing to activate Spam filtering on an email account and selecting the option to reject (delete) suspected spam, the user must acknowledge that valid email message could possibly be deleted by the system. In addition, no matter what level of filtering is selected by the user, some spam may be received nonetheless.