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”. 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, malware, phishing, spam, or inappropriate content are sent to a Quarantine area.
Through spam.ou.edu, all users can access their personal Proofpoint online digest to view emails that have been filtered and quarantined as suspected spam messages by Proofpoint, personally blocked messages, and emails that are filtered as safe.
To access your online digest, go to spam.ou.edu and sign in with your OUNet ID, password, and PingID Authentication.
After you log in to spam.ou.edu, you can:
- Release the messages from the Quarantine tab if you would like to receive the messages in your inbox. Select the message check box and click “Release.”
- Delete senders from your Safe Senders and Blocked Senders lists from the Lists tab.
- Change your Digest preferences from the Profile tab.
Lists Tab
Select the Lists Tab at the bottom left of the online digest to view lists of Safe Senders and Blocked Senders.
Safe Senders List
A Safe Senders List is a list of email addresses that the email protection system will bypass spam filtering for, so legitimate messages from those senders are delivered directly to your inbox instead of being quarantined.
Delete – Delete an email address from the Safe Senders List.
Options
- Refresh – Updates the list of emails in your Safe Senders List.
Blocked Senders List
A Blocked Senders List is a list of email addresses that will automatically be blocked from reaching your inbox. An email address that is on this list, their messages are not processed for spam and are instead rejected.
Delete – Delete an email address from the Blocked Senders List.
Options
- Refresh – Updates the list of emails in your Blocked Senders List.
Profile Tab (SOONER accounts (4x4s) do not receive an End User Digest)
Select the Profile Tab at the bottom left of the online digest to edit the settings for End User Digests that are sent to your email inbox.
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.
ACCOUNT
Contains information that is used for administrative purposes and is not editable by the user.
Quarantine Tab
SPAM – QUARANTINE FOLDER
A list will be displayed of emails that have been filtered as possible spam and have been quarantined.
Check the box next to a message to take further action on the message. Use the toolbar at the top of the page to choose the action for the message selected.
Find – Search for specific emails in your inbox by From, Subject, and/or Age.
Release and Allow Sender – Releases the message to your inbox and informs Proofpoint to create a Whitelist (Allow) rule between the sender and recipient so that mail will not be qualified as Spam from this sender in the future.
Not Spam – Report messages that are not spam but are included in the Quarantine section.
Release – Delivers the email to your inbox.
Options:
- Refresh – Updates the list of emails in your Quarantine folder.
- Delete All – Deletes all emails from your Quarantine folder.