About the CCNY Spam Filter

For several years, the College has reduced the number of unwanted email messages by filtering mail sent to centrally-maintained accounts (accounts@ccny.cuny.edu) for spam.  Spam is also filtered for accounts in the Science Division (accounts@sci.ccny.cuny.edu) and the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education (accounts@med.cuny.edu).

The CCNY spam filter places suspected spam in a secure quarantine area accessible with a web browser.  If you already use a desktop-based spam filter, you can continue to do so.  However, our goal is to catch most spam before it reaches individual desktops.
The first time a message to a filtered account is identified as spam, a Spam Quarantine area is created for that account, and the user is notified by email.  The Spam Quarantine area can only be accessed by you, unless you give someone else access to your email account.  Note that some users have more than one CCNY email address, and that typically means you will have more than one Spam Quarantine area, one per account. 

You will receive a periodic email notice when mail identified as spam has been added to your Quarantine.  To view your Spam Quarantine area, click on the web link in the notification message.  You can then read the suspected spam messages, delete them, release selected messages to your Inbox, etc.  You have two (2) weeks to examine mail placed in the Quarantine before it is automatically deleted.

It is very possible that a small number of messages will be placed in your Quarantine area that you actually need or want—these are known as false positives .  The filter threshold is set at a high enough level to minimize false positives, but some are inevitable.  However, the CCNY spam filter become more accurate over time, as there is a customizable Filter List for each Quarantine account.  You can make a list of email addresses and/or domains that should never be labeled as spam, just for your account.  If you take advantage of this feature, false positives will diminish as you build this Always Allow list. 

Tips for reducing false-positives via the Filter List
You can specify entire domains to Always Allow using the @ symbol; thus, @amazon.com ensures that email from any mail server in the amazon.com domain, such as mailserver2.amazon.com , will be delivered to your Inbox.  A potential issue is that mail sent from mailserver2. support .amazon.com is not covered by that entry.  More likely you will want to specify all subdomains as well, which you do with an additional dot symbol “ . ”  Thus, @.amazon.com ensures that mail from all of amazon.com (including subdomains) will not be filtered.

Another potential use is to enter @.edu in your list, ensuring that no mail sent from any mail server in the edu domain will be labeled as spam.   If you end up getting a lot of spam from the edu domain, you can change you mind by deleting the entry.
You would not want to apply that approach to certain domains, such as @.aol.com, since aol.com is likely to be the source of spam at some point; just add the sender's email address if it a message from an aol account is mistakenly identified as spam.
There is system-wide “Always Allow” list that is set to never block email from a CCNY mail server – please notify your technical support group or the helpdesk if mail from an authorized CCNY mail server is labeled as spam. 

The Spam Filter has a housekeeping command called “Convert” that turns a list of related mail servers in the same domain into a single entry.

In addition to the “Always Allow” list, there is a customizable “Always Block” list – however. we strongly discourage trying to reduce spam via the “Always Block” list .  Spammers constantly change techniques and sending addresses, and it is not likely to be effective!  In addition, a typo or a misunderstanding of mail domains could have unintended consequences, blocking much more than you thought.  We recommend letting the central spam filter do the job of filtering spam – it will never be 100% effective, but it will result in a marked decrease in spam.
You can opt-out of the spam filtering entirely by entering the asterisk symbol ( *) in your “Always Allow” list. 
 
Additional information is available by selecting Help from the Spam Quarantine web page.