Frequently Asked Questions about Spam
Can I opt out of spam blocking? or modify my settings?
You can modify your spam blocking options, or the settings associated with tagging and filtering (via SpamAssassin) at any time. You probably should consider keeping some sort of block or, at least, a filter, but can change the threshold of what is considered "spam." For example, by default the block is set at 7.5; you could raise that to something like 10 if you are nervous about what's being blocked, or lower it to 6 if you want to get more aggressive. Before making those changes, however, we'd encourage you to read our related page. When you are ready to make a change to your settings, follow these steps:
1. Go to www.bu.edu/directory/change-entry.html
2. Once you are on that page, scroll down and Log in to the BU Electronic Directory.
3. Once you are in your directory settings, scroll down to the the Spam Filtering section where you can make the desired change and then Submit.
How did spammers
get my address?
Spammers have many techniques
for harvesting e-mail addresses. But it's not necessary to harvest
addresses -- computers make it easy to generate addresses by trying
combinations of letters and numbers, much like an odometer. Since
there's virtually no effort or cost to the sender, the fact that
many of these addresses don't exist doesn't matter. In addition,
a number of viruses use infected machines, even simple desktop
PCs, to send spam. In many cases you receive the spam simply because
you appear in the address book of the person who owns an infected
computer.
Can I get
a new e-mail address?
For the reasons described in the
previous paragraph, switching to a new e-mail address probably
won't solve the problem. All @bu.edu accounts are targets for spam.
Why is some
mail not automatically deleted or tagged by SpamAssassin?
Mail sent directly to a departmental mail server (e.g.,
mail addressed to you@yourdept.bu.edu rather than to you@bu.edu)
bypasses the central gateways, so cannot benefit from either the
University's central spam filtering or central virus scanning.
Also, mail that never leaves a local mail host or that is sent
from one local BU Microsoft Exchange user to another is not scanned.
Outgoing messages sent to non-BU recipients are not scanned. However,
if you have set up mail forwarding to deliver your Boston University
e-mail to an external address, mail sent to you@bu.edu does pass
through the central gateways and is scanned for viruses and scored
by SpamAssassin.
I'm still getting some spam
You will always get some unwanted
mail and should expect to manually delete some. However, our blocking levels are conservative by default, in order to preserve say, your favorite newsletter or discounts
from your favorite catalog company. As previously mentioned, you can change your own individual threshold
at any time by logging
in to your directory page.
Some junk messages will go untagged, no matter what thresholds you set. If that's a significant problem for you, you can further manage spam by bringing in an additional filtering method. For example, if you are a desktop mail user, you can use the Junk Mail controls/filters that are built in to popular desktop mail programs such as Thunderbird and Outlook (please see our related page for more details).