Questions and Answers regarding the department spam filtering system

Q. How long will the spam-flagged messages be held ?
A. They will be held for fourteen days.

Q.How do I retrieve a frozen mail?
A. Use your favorite mail-reader and reply to the spam digest containing the email you want. The reply should INCLUDE the spam digest. You delete all lines except those containing the information about spam emails you'd like to retrieve.

Q. What if I will be traveling and away from a computer for more than fourteen days ?
A. In this case you should visit http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~sso and opt out of the system before your trip to ensure that you have the opportunity to review every piece of mail which comes for you while you are away. The goal is to ensure that you never lose an important email. Your login and password for this URL are the same as you use to log into the Unix systems.

Q. What if I delete a digest by accident and later want to check what mail is being held for me by the system ?
A. You can visit http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~sso to request a "MetaDigest". Your login and password are the same as you use to log into the Unix systems. The MetaDigest will list every piece of your mail being held as spam by the system. You can reply to the MetaDigest in the same way you reply to a daily digest to have any or all of the spam listed in it sent to you.

Q. What do I do if I don't want any of my email filtered for spam ?
A. You can opt yourself out of the system by visiting http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~sso and select opt OUT. Your login and password are the same as you use to log into the unix systems.

Q. What do I do if I want my spam filtered at the server ?
A. You can opt yourself in to the system by visiting http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~sso and select opt IN. Your login and password are the same as you use to log into the Unix systems.

Q. What if I don't want to be bothered by spam or digests, I just want it all to go away ?
A. The anti-spam system will never throw out mail on your behalf since it is not possible to make a definitive determination whether it's mail you want to see or not. You can configure your mail reader to automatically filter out the digests or move them to another folder. See http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/facilities/FAQ/EmailFilterJunk.html for information on filtering email with most mail readers.

Q. I want to take part in spam filtering, but I am expecting a very important piece of mail from a conference. How can I make sure I see that mail as it arrives ?
A. In this case your best choice is to opt out of spam control for the period of time in which you are expecting critical email which might possibly be tagged as spam, and then opt back in once the project or conference is over.

Q. What if I receive spam despite the filter ?
A. You can email the spam as an attachment to spam@cs.sunysb.edu. The spam will be sent to the vendor for analysis and updating of future antispam rules.

Q. How do I reply to the digest using Unix mail?
A. When you reply to a digest to request a spam message, you must include the line(s) listing the message(s) you want to retrieve. The Unix mailer does not do this include automatically, so simply typing "r" for reply will result in an error message in return. To reply to the mail via Unix mail and include its entire contents, use the "r" for reply and on the next blank line type "~m". If you want to receive all the listed spam, you can then type "." to close the message.

If you want to edit the spam list and only retrieve some of it, on the next line after the "~m" type "~e" (in each case you do not type the quotes, just the 2 characters). This will bring up whichever editor you have set in your environment. You can set or change that before starting mail with "setenv EDITOR vi" or whichever editor you prefer.


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