Managing Spam at BU
Boston University uses SpamAssassin to automatically tag suspected spam e-mail messages on the incoming mail servers.
By default, BU e-mail accounts do not receive spam that is tagged at a SpamAssassin level 7.5 or higher. Although you can choose to modify your 7.5 setting to make it more or less restrictive, you should keep in mind that you will always get some unwanted mail. You need to be careful not to set such a low threshold that you are blocking mail you do want to get.
To manage spam that does make it under that (7.5) block threshold, you can filter it into a separate folder. If you choose to do that, you should then review that folder on a regular basis, retrieve any messages that you do want to keep, then delete and purge the rest.
Please read our related page on managing the balance of blocking and fltering for more details.
What if I've done all I can do with the information above and I'm still getting too much spam? Unfortunately, not all unwanted mail will get tagged, so blocking and filtering won't always work. There is no perfect system and, for whatever reason, SpamAssassin doesn't identify everything. Here are some other suggestions that can help:
- If you use a desktop mail program, you can further manage spam using the Junk Mail controls/filters that are built in to them. Please see our related page for more details.
- There are other spam-filtering tools you can use. For example, some people find that if they forward mail to an external account, the filters built-in to those external mail programs will weed out still more unwanted mail.
- Just ignore the unwanted mail and delete it. Spam is an unfortunate reality of using e-mail and it is not unique to your account.
I'm getting so much spam! Can I get a new e-mail address? It's very unlikely that getting a new e-mail address from BU will solve the problem. As we outline in more detail on a related page, everyone with a BU e-mail address is a target for the same kind of auto-generated spam.
