Information technology services (ITS) will fire its latest volley in the war against spam Oct. 16. That's when a new ISU spam rule automatically will be applied to virtually all faculty and staff email Exchange (Outlook) accounts. The rule is intended to reduce the spam email coming into your inbox. However, you can opt out of the spam measure before it takes effect.
Once the ISU rule has been applied to your account, it will work like this:
- An email sent to your university address arrives on the campus network.
- The university spam-tagging system examines the mail for spam-like characteristics and assigns a score. A score of 50, for example, means the email has a 50 percent chance of being spam.
- If the email score is 59 percent or less, the mail proceeds to your inbox.
- If the email score is 60 percent or greater, it's diverted to your "junk" email folder, where it will remain for 30 days, unless you remove it earlier. ITS staff recommend you give the "junk" folder a quick scan occasionally to ensure no legitimate email got overlooked.
- Next, the email will be moved to the "deleted items" folder for another 30 days.
- After that, the email disappears from your mail folders. However, it can be recovered (with ITS help) for another 30 days before it completely disappears.
Got your own rules?
If you've already created your own spam rules and those rules are active (checked), your rules will continue to work when the ISU spam rule is installed Oct. 16. If your rules are inactive (unchecked), they'll go away when the ISU rule is installed.
Opting out of the new rule
To opt out of the ISU spam rule, send a note by Oct. 9 to exchangeadmins@iastate.edu. Another option is to let the rule take effect and give it a try. You can always disable or modify it later.
More info
Details on managing the ISU spam rule or creating your own are available on ITS "Manage Spam (Exchange)" site.
