VUmailguard
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is VUmailguard?
- What is spam?
- What is VU doing about spam?
- Why Proofpoint?
- How does spam filtering work?
- What email addresses are filtered?
- What if my VUmail is forwarded to another address?
- Why am I getting fewer messages than I used to?
- I didn't receive a message I was expecting; is it because of that Proofpoint thingy?
- What happens to viruses?
- How do I choose what happens to my mail?
- What's a "quarantine?"
- What's a "digest?"
- Are quarantined messages confidential?
- Do quarantined messages count against my quota?
- How often is the digest delivered?
- What does "tag and pass" mean?
- Can I disable digest messages?
- Can I request a digest at any time?
- What are safelists and blocklists?
- What is the order in which VUmailguard processes my email?
General Questions:
VUmailguard is the deployment of a modular based electronic messaging security product, featuring anti-spam filtering and anti-virus protection, designed to help keep the Vanderbilt network virus-free.
Spamming is commonly defined as the sending of unsolicited bulk e-mail - that is, email that was not asked for (unsolicited) and received by multiple recipients (bulk). A further common definition of spam restricts it to unsolicited commercial e-mail, a definition that does not consider non-commercial solicitations such as political or religious pitches, even if unsolicited, as spam. This definition is directly copied from the wikipedia definition for SPAM (electronic).
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Q: What is VU doing about spam?
Vanderbilt University ITS has
implemented the Proofpoint Protection
Server as well as subscribed to several real-time Blocking Lists to
help manage spam for Vanderbilt University. Currently all VUmail, VUexchange, and VUMC exchange
users are enrolled in the service.
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After comparing all of the
enterprise class products for spam management, the VUmail Implementers team
decided that Proofpoint provides the most sophisticated evaluation engine
available, and the fewest errors in determining whether an email is spam.
While cost and feature sets were also compared, the accuracy of the
software was the determining factor, and Proofpoint is the clear industry
leader.
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Q: How does spam filtering work?
Proofpoint MLX technology
examines over 50,000 mail attributes to assign a numeric probability that a
particular piece of email is spam. It also includes machine learning
algorithms that predict new spam mutations, and is constantly updated to
keep up with the ever-changing methods of spammers.
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Q: What email addresses are filtered?
Only email sent to your
@vanderbilt.edu address will be filtered. Any messages sent to other
accounts, such as yahoo mail or hotmail, will not be scanned, even though
you may review those messages on campus.
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Q: What if my VUmail is forwarded to another address?
All email sent to you using
your @vanderbilt.edu address are filtered before they are forwarded
elsewhere. Quarantine digest messages (see What's a digest? below) are forwarded like your other email.
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Q: Why am I getting fewer messages than I used to?
By default, when VUmailguard
detects that an email message is spam, that message is
"quarantined." You will receive a daily digest message, listing
all of the senders and subject lines of messages which have been
quarantined. If there is a message that you want to examine, you can release
the message, and it will be delivered to your mailbox. You can also change
your disposition so that spam is marked in the message header but delivered
to you, and your local email client can perform the filtering. Or you may
have VUmailguard ignore your mail, so that all mail, spam or not, is
delivered normally. For more information, see the Usage
questions below.
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Q: I didn't receive a message I was expecting; is it because of that Proofpoint thingy?
Probably not, Proofpoint has
the lowest error rate of any anti-spam technology currently available.
However, if a message is quarantined in error, you can still release the
message via the daily digest.
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Even before an email message
is analyzed as possible spam, that message is scanned for viruses. Infected
messages are stripped of the virus, and then sent to the quarantine. The
cleaned message will appear in the digest message, and can be released from
the quarantine if you want to see it.
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Usage Questions:
Q: How do I choose what happens to my mail?
There are three possible
dispositions for your email. By default, you are placed in the
"quarantine and digest (default)" group (see quarantine and digest below). However, you may change your disposition to "tag and
pass," or "quarantine and digest (strict)". To change your
disposition, login to the VUnet Modify Personal
Options page (https://www2.vanderbilt.edu/vunet/modify.html)
and make your choice under "VUmailguard Anti-Spam Disposition
Options" .
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When a piece of email is sent
to any.address@vanderilt.edu, VUmailguard scans the message to determine if
it is spam. If it is spam, VUmailguard reroutes the message to a large
storage area on a separate server. This prevents spam from cluttering up
your Inbox. VUmailguard sends you a daily digest email with the subjects
and senders of all the messages which were moved to the quarantine.
Unreleased messages are deleted from the quarantine after 14 days.
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If your email disposition is
set to "quarantine and digest", VUmailguard sends you a daily
email message which includes a list of the senders and subject lines for
each of your quarantine messages. To view an email in the list, click
"release" in the message, and the quarantine delivers that
message with "released" added to the subject line. Daily digests
only include messages quarantined since the last digest. However, you can
request a comprehensive digest with all of the messages in your quarantine.
To do this, click the link labeled "Request New Quarantine
Digest" in any digest message.
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Q: Are quarantined messages confidential?
Quarantined messages are
treated with the same level of confidentiality as all email at Vanderbilt:
Access to email without the permission of the recipient can only be
authorized by a Vice-Chancellor or the Director of Human Resources.
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Q: Do quarantined messages count against my quota?
No. Quarantined messages are
stored on a separate server, and do not count against your email quota
unless they are released to your Inbox.
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Q: How often is the digest delivered?
Digests are mailed each day
at approximately 12:01 a.m.
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Q: What does "tag and pass" mean?
If you set your email
disposition to "tag and pass", all your email is scanned, but
messages likely to be spam are not quarantined. Instead, the message is
delivered to your mailbox with a tag added to the message header. You can
then set up filter rules in your local email client (Outlook, Thunderbird,
Mulberry, etc.) based on that line in the header. (Recommended for advanced
users only.)
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Q: Can I disable digest messages?
Yes, digest
messages can be disabled. Your daily digest message provides a link
called "Manage My Account". Select this link then select "Profile"
and two check boxes appear. The check box labeled "Send digest with
new messages in my Quarantine Digest" enables or disables the receipt of
the daily digest. The check box labeled "Send digest even when I have
no messages in my Quarantine Digest" enables or disables the receipt of an
empty digest.
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Q: Can I request a digest at any time?
Yes, a digest can be
requested at any time by selecting the link labeled "Request New Quarantine
Digest." This action produces a summary digest that contains all
messages sent to your email address that were quarantined for the past 14
days including messages up to the hour of your new digest request.
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Q: What are safelists and blocklists?
A safelist is a list of addresses which should never be counted as spam, no matter what the result of the anti-spam scan. Likewise, a blocklist is a list of addresses which are always blocked as spam, no matter what the result of the anti-spam scan. You can add and remove addresses to your own safelist and blocklist.
If an email that you have requested, like a newsletter, appears in your digest message quarantine list, you might want to add the sender's email address to your personal safelist. Click on the link to "Safelist" next to that entry in the digest, and the sender's email address will be added to your personal safelist. At the same time, that message is released from quarantine and delivered to your inbox.
To create a blocklist, or to edit a safelist or a blocklist, click on "Request Safe/Blocked Senders List" in your daily digest message. An email showing all of your current safelist and blocklist addresses is sent to your inbox. (If you have never safelisted an address from the digest before, the email is still sent, but the lists may be empty.) Click the "Add" button next to "Safe Senders List" or "Blocked Senders List" to add a new address, or click the "Remove" button next to any address which you want to delete.
Certain sources of email are
always delivered to users. These sources are on a system-wide safelist, and
are never blocked. A system-wide blocklist is available at
https://its.vanderbilt.edu/blocklist [forthcoming]. To find out if an
address is on the system-wide safelist, contact ITS Partner Support at
its-partner@vanderbilt.edu, 6-4877.
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Q: What is the order in which VUmailguard processes my email?
1) Email firewall – messages are either rejected or discarded if either the sender’s host is listed on DNSBL, or the message is blocked by a rule e.g. the message exceeds size limits or contains high-risk attachments. 2) VUmailguard scans for viruses prior to an email message ever being analyzed as possible spam. 3) Once the message is deemed to be clean, the service assigns a numeric probability that the email is spam. Based on the probability score several things will happen. First, all messages scored at 99 or 100 are dropped from the system. Even if you selected the tag and pass disposition option, the global rule for Vanderbilt University is to drop these messages that achieve this high of a score.
Tag and Pass – All messages (not 99 or 100) are delivered to the mailbox with a tag added to the message header
Quarantine and Digest (default) – All messages 0-69 are delivered to the mailbox, all messages 70-98 are quarantined
Quarantine and Digest (strict) – All messages 0-49 are delivered to the mailbox, all messages 50-98 are quarantined
All of this
happens in milliseconds, as the VUmailguard service handles over 30,000,000
messages per month.
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