Information on spam filters can be found here.
Five levels of protection:
• Filter Normal: Filters obvious spam to your Junk Email Folder
• Filter Aggressive: Filters a wider range of spam to your Junk Email Folder
• Reject Normal: Rejects obvious spam without sending it to your mailbox
• Reject Aggressive: Rejects a wider range of spam without sending it to your mailbox
• Reject + Filter: Combines Reject Normal with Filter Aggressive
• Off: Delivers all spam to your inbox
Other tips to limiting spam in your inbox
• Avoid posting your email address in a public forum or website. If you must provide your email address in a public setting, disguise your email address by using the fully spelled out version like “student at ou dot edu” instead of “student@ou.edu.”
• When you sign up for an online service, there are often options for allowing the service provider to share your information with third parties. Ensure you choose to not share your information unless you really want to be contacted by these affiliates. There is little to stop these affiliates from reselling your information to others.
• When you sign up for an online service, ensure the service provider states they will not sell your information to third parties without your approval.
Students receiving spam emails to their OU exchange account can steer off the junk by changing their filter settings, an OU IT spokeswoman said.
Becky Grant, OU IT spokeswoman, said that there is no good way to prevent all spam from getting to your inbox.
“Our technology will never be perfect at detecting spam, and the generators of spam are always finding new ways to beat our spam filters,” Grant said. “It is not the students' fault if they receive spam, although they can do some smart things to minimize the amount of spam they receive.”
Grant said students should log into their account and adjust the spam filter settings to one of the six different settings available.
“As a reminder, OU will never asks you for your username, password or any account information, and if you get an email asking for that information, delete it.”
Spammers compose spam messages and use automated tools to send that single spam message to hundreds of email addresses, said Geoff Wilson, senior information security analyst.
OU IT is able to weed out the majority of spam using the built-in spam filters in Microsoft Exchange 2010, Wilson said.
“These filters inspect the email content, the sending email address, the sending mail server and email attachments to determine if a message is likely spam or malicious in nature," Wilson said.
If a spam message does make it to a user’s inbox, the user can forward the message on to OU IT at spam@ou.edu so IT can prevent further similar spam from affecting users, he said.
One student reported an recent influx of spam emails but hasn't changed the account settings.
“I really don’t do anything to prevent spam on my OU account,” OU senior Theron Smith said. “I just open the email to mark it as read, and the spam is getting out of control."
Smith said the majority of the emails he receives are spam offering large sums of money for partnerships or inheriting a ton of money but doesn't think it's a result of other accounts he's signed up for.
"My OU email is on my ESPN, PlayStation 3, StubHub and Netflix accounts, but I feel like those are all pretty secure, so I don’t think that’s the problem,” he said.
