Calvin's Spam Firewall: Overview

Objectives for a Spam Firewall
When we researched the various spam firewall products we looked for a product that would:

1. Reduce spam coming into e-mail boxes.
2. Not block legitimate messages.
3. Not require users to do anything.
4. To reduce spam enough that most users would not want to set personal settings.
5. Allow users to set personal settings if they want to.

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How does the Firewall work?

An e-mail message coming to @calvin.edu mailboxes first goes through the firewall and is checked for

• Known spammers
• Viruses
• Attachments - Not allowed: bat, cmd, com, cpl, exe, dif, scr, vbs
• Content - Look for known characteristics of spammers, phishers, etc.
• Fake senders: Is the domain good?

If it passes those checks it is assigned a spam score. What happens to the message is then determined by

• Your personal settings
• The system defaults

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What can you expect?

• If you spend less than 15 minutes a day managing spam please use the defaults.
• Don't expect all spam to disappear
• If you use the Spam Firewall defaults you will

  • See considerably less spam in your inbox
  • If you use GroupWise you can still use the Junk Mail Handling feature to manage remaining spam
  • Other e-mail programs have rules that can be used.
• GroupWise users: Because the Spam Firewall is stopping most spam please rethink your GroupWise Junk Mail Handling and Rules - You may not need to use these features anymore

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If you customize

For additional information on Calvin's Spam Firewall. please see the Web page instructions.

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