Spam Firewall

You can resolve spam problems with your UCSF e-mail account by understanding and adjusting the server-side spam filtering settings described below. These settings determine what messages are quarantined as spam and what messages are delivered to your e-mail application and inbox.

Before you begin

Read How e-mail reaches you (or not), which prepares you to better understand the instructions below.

Review and adjust settings

1. Visit https://vpn.ucsf.edu then log in to VPN.

2. Select the link called Email - SPAM Control:

   

3. Log in using your e-mail address and password:

   

4. Quarantine Inbox
   After logging in, your quarantine inbox appears. Use the links, checkboxes, and buttons to perform actions on the quarantined messages:
   
5. Whitelist/Blacklist
   Select the Preferences tab, then select the Whitelist/Blacklist menu item. The server-side whitelist and blacklist appear.
   1. If legitimate messages aren't going in to your inbox, add the sender's e-mail address or domain to the whitelist and confirm that it does not accidentally appear in the blacklist.
   2. If you're receiving too much spam, add problematic e-mail addresses or domains to the blacklist and confirm that they do not accidentally appear in the whitelist. However, since e-mail messages can be easily forged, blacklisting is not always effective. For example, if the sender's e-mail address has been forged to appear as one that you trust, don't add it to your blacklist -- that will block legitimate messages, which is not what you want. Blacklisting sometimes helps, but in some cases you'll just need to set your Quarantine or Block settings to lower values and hope for the best -- see below.
6. Quarantine Settings
   Select the Quarantine Settings section, then ensure that Enable Quarantine is set to Yes and that Default Language is set to English (iso-8859-1):
   

7. Select the Spam Settings section.

   1. Ensure that Enable Spam Scoring is set to Yes.
   2. Ensure that Use System Defaults is set to No.
   3. Adjust the Tag, Quarantine, and Block values according to how you want server-side spam filtering to behave, as described in detail at How e-mail reaches you (or not).

   

   Ignore the recommendations which appear on the screen. If you're not sure what values you should have, spend a few weeks using 3-5-7 for Tag-Quarantine-Block.

   In particular:

   1. If legitimate messages aren't going in to your inbox, you might need to set the Quarantine or Block values higher.
   2. If you're receiving too much spam, you might need to set the Quarantine or Block values lower.

   After making changes, select either of the two Save Changes buttons. (Either button will save all the changes you make.)

8. Select the Log Off link in the top right corner.

After you finish

The changes above affect spam filtering only at the server level. To ensure that spam problems are resolved, you must also review and adjust client-side spam filtering. To do so, see Resolve Spam Problems.

If the above steps didn't help...

If you're trying to resolve a problem in which legitimate messages aren't going to your inbox, even after you've adjusted Tag, Quarantine, and Block values above and had someone send you some test messages, return to step 6 above, set Enable spam filtering to No, then save your changes. This disables server-side spam filtering entirely and all messages sent to your e-mail address are passed to your e-mail application where messages are still subject to client-side spam filtering.

Need more help than this?

Contact UCSF Customer Support at 415/514-4100 (available 24x7x365). If possible, be at an internet-connected computer when you call.