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Recently, The University of Maine’s Information Technologies has implemented a new e-mail filtering system for the FirstClass.
SpamAssassin is the latest solution in the effort to help identify unsolicited spam mail sent to and from FirstClass and prevent the delivery of e-mail viruses.
“FirstClass was getting hammered by incoming spam messages and causing delivery delays in legitimate messages,” Fabian Schramke, an IT student, said. “Many students complained about the amount of spam they received and asked us to take appropriate action.”
This program is not only a spam mail filter, but a virus detection system. As all mail is sent to and from FirstClass, SpamAssassin will go to work scanning the header, body and sender of each e-mail.
As every e-mail is checked, the SpamAssassin keeps a “tally” of detected identifiers. Once the tally reaches a preset limit, the message is marked as “spam,” IT said.
Costs for the development of SpamAssassin on the FirstClass server were kept to a minimum. SpamAssasin is an OpenSource product, also known as free software.
The only significant cost was in the purchase of two new servers. Both servers filter incoming mail for spam as well as test e-mail attachments for viruses, Schramke said.
It is never possible to check your inbox of new messages and know exactly which e-mail is spam and which is valuable. IT has recognized this problem and has not set SpamAssassin to block spam messages.
The decision whether or not to delete a message marked as “spam” is up to each person, the IT Help Center, said.
“One of the reasons we felt it was important to start marking spam messages is so when the next version of FirstClass is released, which provides tools to set mail rules for your FirstClass mailbox, people will be able to set it so mail marked as “spam” will deliver to a separate folder in their mailbox rather than into the main mailbox area,” John Gregory, a FirstClass administrator, said.
As any FirstClass message is sent to and from the Internet, the SpamAssassin scans for spam identifiers, as well as viruses. If the virus detection system determines that a virus is contained in a message attachment, it will first attempt to remove the virus from the attachment. If it is not possible to remove the virus, the attachment will be removed. In either case, the virus will not affect the computer and a a notice will be returned to the sender regarding the detected virus, the IT Help Center said.
IT stressed the need to still keep other virus detection systems on your computer. Programs such as Norton Antivirus are still very important to have operating on your campus PC, Schramke said.
“There are many other ways for your computer to obtain viruses; SpamAssassin simply protects your FirstClass account,” Schramke said.
Since the SpamAssassin was just recently put to use, it is likely that there will be a few minor glitches that will need to be worked out.
Anyone with questions regarding SpamAssassin can e-mail the “Administrator” through FirstClass or call the IT Help Center at 581-2506.
Bangor Daily News