CTIS has spam filters in place on the mail server to weed out spam before it ever gets to end users’ mailbox. These filters block nearly 6,000 messages each day. That totals about 40,000 messages each week that are marked by CTIS as spam. These messages are then simply removed from the incoming mail and are never seen by the end users.

These Automatic spam filters simply analyze the message subject, headers and/or content looking for “Kill” words or phrases, or other indicators of spam. It must be noted here that the “perfect” spam filter has not been invented yet – and almost certainly never will. There is an ongoing game of “cat-and-mouse” between the spammers and the filters designed to protect against them. Whenever new measures are put in place to protect against them, the spammers try to come up with new ways to get around them.

The good news is that, as evidenced by the desperate measures spammers are currently taking to fool the filters at the expense of getting their messages across, we have them on the run. The bad news is that of the 125,000 messages being delivered each week at PUC, some phishing scams and spam messages will still find their way to your mailbox.

While very useful, these automatic filters alone will never fully alleviate the problem of e-mail overload or even spam for these reasons:

• Automated filters will never catch all of the spam, since spammers will continue to modify their text to evade the filters.
• Automated filters must be setup conservatively so legitimate e-mails are not blocked.
• Apart from spam, legitimate e-mails will continue to increase in volume as e-mail is a primary method of communication within business and personal relationships. Even a perfect spam filter would still leave plenty of e-mails for the end user to manage.