Dealing with Spam - spam.ou.edu

More than 90% of the email messages sent to campus are spam. OU IT blocks about 85% of all messages as spam. However, we cannot block all spam at a campus-wide level without increasing “false positives” – legitimate messages that get tagged as spam. OU IT has implemented an email security gateway – Proofpoint – to help improve email security and protect users from spam and phishing emails.

The Proofpoint Messaging Security Gateway is an application that provides spam, virus, and content policy infrastructure to OU’s email applications. All incoming email is inspected by the Proofpoint Messaging Security Gateway as soon as it arrives at our campus. Messages that contain a virus, spam, or inappropriate content are sent to a Quarantine area.

Through spam.ou.edu, all users have access to a personal Proofpoint online digest to view emails that have been filtered and quarantined as suspected spam messages.

To access your online digest, go to spam.ou.edu and sign in with your OUNet ID and password.

After you log in to spam.ou.edu, you can:

• Release the messages from the Quarantine if you would like to receive the messages in your inbox. Select the message check box and click “Release.”
• Add senders to your Safe Senders and Blocked Senders lists. Click Lists on the left side of the window, and then click New to add a Safe Sender to the list. The procedure is the same for your Blocked Senders list.
• Change your Digest preferences. Click Profile on the left side of the window.

• Request Digest – Sends a personal digest of emails that have been filtered and sorted into different categories, giving you an opportunity to take action on them.
• Refresh – Updates the list of emails in your Spam – Quarantine folder.
• Delete All – Deletes all emails from your Spam – Quarantine folder.

Find – Search for specific emails in your inbox by Sender (From); Subject; and/or Age (Date).

Release and Allow Sender – Releases the message to your inbox and informs Proofpoint Essentials to create a Whitelist (Allow) rule between the sender and recipient so that mail will not be qualified as Spam from this sender in future.

Release – Delivers the email to your inbox.

Block Sender – Blocks subsequent emails from sender from reaching your inbox and adds the sender to the Blocked Sender’s list.

Delete – Deletes current message from your Reputation Service folder.

Options

• Request Digest – Sends a personal digest of emails that have been filtered and sorted into different categories, giving you an opportunity to take action on them.
• Refresh – Updates the list of emails in your Reputation Service folder.
• Delete All – Delete’s all emails from your Reputation Service folder.

Find – Search for specific emails in your inbox by Sender (From); Subject; and/or Age (Date).

Release and Allow Sender – Releases the message to your inbox and informs Proofpoint Essentials to create a Whitelist (Allow) rule between the sender and recipient so that mail will not be qualified as Spam from this sender in future.

Not Spam – Report messages that are not spam but are included in the Spam – Quarantined section.

Release – Delivers the email to your inbox.

Block Sender – Blocks subsequent emails from sender from reaching your inbox and adds the sender to the Blocked Sender’s list.

Delete – Deletes current message from your Email Firewall folder.

Options

• Request Digest – Sends a personal digest of emails that have been filtered and sorted into different categories, giving you an opportunity to take action on them.
• Refresh – Updates the list of emails in your Reputation Service folder.

• Request Digest – Sends a personal digest of emails that have been filtered and sorted into different categories, giving you an opportunity to take action on them.
• Refresh – Updates the list of emails in your Reputation Service folder.

Use the toolbar at the top of the page to choose the action for the sender selected.

New – Specify an email address or Internet domain to add to Safe Senders List.

Edit – Edit an email address or Internet domain that you have already added to the Safe Senders List.

Delete – Delete an email address or Internet domain from the Safe Senders List.

Options

• Request Digest – Sends a personal digest of emails that have been filtered and sorted into different categories, giving you an opportunity to take action on them.
• Refresh – Updates the list of emails in your Reputation Service folder.

Use the toolbar at the top of the page to choose the action for the sender selected.

New – Specify an email address or Internet domain to add to Blocked Senders List.

Edit – Edit an email address or Internet domain that you have already added to the Blocked Senders List.

Delete – Delete an email address or Internet domain from the Blocked Senders List.

Options

• Request Digest – Sends a personal digest of emails that have been filtered and sorted into different categories, giving you an opportunity to take action on them.
• Refresh – Updates the list of emails in your Reputation Service folder.

 

SETTINGS

Choose one or both of the following:

• Send digest with new messages in End User Digest – Delivers an End User Digest to your email inbox when new messages are filtered by Proofpoint.
• Send digest even when no messages in End User Digest – Delivers an End User Digest to your email inbox even when no messages have been filtered by Proofpoint.