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Ohio State University logo Office of Information Technology Technology Support Center (8help)

Anti-Spam Service: Getting Started - Turning on the Service



It is an individual decision whether to use the central system anti-spam service. Because the spam filter allows customization of the spam-processing rules by each individual, an incoming message must be streamed (filtered through the rules set for the individual receiving the e-mail).

A stream is a collection of email rules and preferences. Each email stream can have its own unique rules, settings, and thresholds.

Associated with each stream is a trap. A trap consists of messages that have been held based on settings established by the stream's owner. For example, a message can be held because of its spam score, or because it contains a suspicious attachment, or because it comes from a certain email address.

In other words, you can think of incoming email as a huge river of information that breaks off into little streams for each user; the filter lets users set up their own traps to catch spam like setting up nets to catch garbage floating down a creek.

Setting Up Your Personal Stream

You should allow yourself 20-30 minutes for the process of turning on the Anti-Spam service and setting up your stream..

You should set up a personal stream based on your lastname.#; if at the top of the interface you see something like "Viewing stream: lastname.# (Only_tag_spam_messages)" then the filter is not enabled.

To set up your personal stream:

  1. Open your internet browser.
  2. Go to the CanIt-PRO login page at antispam.osu.edu.
  3. Type your lastname.# and the password for your OSU Internet Username.
  4. Click Log In.
  5. Click on Enable Expert Interface if you are taken directly into the Simple Interface
  6. Click Preferences in the Spam Trap toolbar.
  7. Set "Show 'Actions Taken' page" to No -- then click "Submit Changes" if this changed your preferences.
  8. Click Set Default Stream in the Preferences menu.
  9. You may need to change the drop down menu that may say "Only tag spam messages, no subject tag" to your lastname.# and click redirect to this stream.

    Set Default Stream page

  10. Next, Click on Stream Settings
  11. We believe the following setting choices to be a good start, but you will want to spend a little time over the next few weeks training the system to your specific style.
    • (S-100) Automatically reject messages scoring more than this amount: 99
    • (S-300) Spam Threshold: 5
      The spam threshold sets the lower number for where the spam system will start trapping messages. The Higher this is - the more spam you will see. The lower the number is - the higher number of non-spam messages will be trapped.
    • (S-1200) Only tag spam -- do not hold any message: No
    • (S-2300) Enable Bayesian analysis: Yes
    • (S-2310) Enable Bayesian training: Yes
    • (S-2500) Add links to messages to train Bayesian analyzer: Inline
    • (S-2800) Remove pre-existing Baysian training links from incoming mail: Yes
  13. Click the Submit Changes button.

From this point on, you will be ready to train your spam filtering to suit your needs.

Details about Email Streams

All blacklisting and whitelisting decisions are unique to a stream. It is perfectly feasible for one stream to whitelist a sender, a second stream to blacklist it, and a third stream to do neither. Held messages are stored in the spam filter's database (rather than your email spool), and are sent along to your email if approved or discarded if rejected.



Current Record: 2654

Create Date: 08-12-2005
Last Reviewed: 04-30-2007
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