Spam Filtering at Notre Dame

Please note: If you are a student whose email account is on Google Apps, spam filtering will be handled through the Google Gmail interface.

Update 1/24/08: MySpam Issues and Status

What Is Spam Filtering?
How Does Spam Filtering Work?
Using Your Spam Quarantine
Modifying Your Quarantine Notifications
Spam Blocking
Instructions for Email Administrators

What is spam filtering?

Beginning in August 2007, a new campus-wide spam filter (the Sendmail Sentrion) was enabled for all Notre Dame e-mail accounts. Messages from e-mail accounts you may have with other servers (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) that are forwarded to your Notre Dame account will also be automatically filtered for spam. The Sendmail Sentrion product was chosen for its ease of use, the ability to handle the load of email messages, and for its reliability, thus enabling the e-mail service to run at its normal high speed.

Student email which is now delivered to gmail.nd.edu is NOT filtered by this service, and is instead handled by the Google Gmail interface.

How does it work?

As new messages arrive, the spam filter scans each message using a variety of services to determine if it is likely spam or not. If a message is suspected to be spam, the message is delivered to your personal quarantine box. If the message appears to be legitimate, the message is delivered to your regular Notre Dame inbox. The quarantine box will send you a summary message on a regular basis to help you review the contents of your quarantine.

You will be able to view quarantined messages and decide whether to have each message released to your inbox, allowed (a.k.a. whitelisted and then released) so that the sender’s messages will no longer be considered spam, or blocked (a.k.a. blacklisted). If no action is taken, quarantined messages will automatically be deleted after 30 days.