TechFAQ - Spam Filtering

The College of PNHS provides spam filtering services to it e-mail users in the form of a Barracuda spam filter. This unit automatically filters all email sent to uses whose e-mail addresses end in @pnhs.purdue.edu, @pharmacy.purdue.edu, or @nursing.purdue.edu. The Barracuda spam filter operates at several levels:

• E-mail that is determined to definitely be spam is automatically deleted. Currently, this is ~65% of our incoming email.
• E-mail that is probably spam is quarantined - kept on the Barracuda for user evaluation. (1%)
• E-mail that is possibly spam in delivered, with "[SPAM]" added to the beginning of the subject line. (9%)
• E-mail that is believed to be legitimate is delivered normally (21%).
• As an added bonus, e-mail to invalid recipients and e-mail containing known viruses is automatically deleted. (4%)

If you have quarantined e-mails, you will receive a e-mail from the Barracuda telling you about them, so that you can determine if the are actually spam. There will be a link at the bottom of the email that will take you to a web page where you can classify your quarantined e-mails. You can also use this web interface to adjust your personal settings for the barracuda. We recommend that you keep one of the messages from the Barracuda in your inbox, so that you can use the link to access your Barracuda settings. If you go directly to the barracuda, you will need to provide your Barracuda password; which is different from any of your other passwords. If this bothers you, we can buy a more powerful model of the Barracuda that will integrate with our existing login systems; please contact PNHS Tech Support and have your checkbook ready. ☺

The Barracuda has the ability to learn your personal preferences - what YOU consider spam. To enable this, you need to install the Barracuda Spam Plugin on your computer. You can download the plugin from our Barracuda at https://barracuda.pnhs.purdue.edu/. You don't need to login; just click on the "Get Mail Client Plugins Here" link at the bottom of the page. Currently, the plugin is only available for Microsoft Outlook on the Windows environment. This is the e-mail client on which Purdue is standardizing.

Once you install the plugin, you will have a new toolbar in Outlook, with a red and a green button. The red button will classify messages as spam, and the green button will classify messages as not-spam. You need to classify a minimum of 200 messages of each type before your personal filtering settings will take effect. It is important to have more messages classified as not-spam, or the filter may begin mis-marking your legitimate messages. You can adjust the functioning of the plugin from the Tools menu; select Tools ⇒ Options ⇒ Spam Plugin. You should look through these settings before you begin to classify messages. For more information, see the Barracuda Spam Filter User's Guide.