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Handling SPAM

Spam

Spam is the common term for Unsolicited Bulk (marketing) Email (UBE) that comes from various sources to your inbox. Your email address can be obtained from a variety of sources, including online orders, contests, surveys and warranty registrations.

While spam is usually regarded as an annoynace, spam can be a risk to security and system integrity. Spam is often dellivered with an attachment containing a virus, worm, or malware or spambot software.

ITS filters spam for @unm.edu and @salud.unm.edu email accounts, meanwhile, spammers become more sophisticated every day. To protect UNM accounts and optimize mail server performance, ITS filters messages based on many criteria. Only five percent of nearly five-million daily emails coming in to UNM pass through filters to inboxes, so it should not be surprising that spam gets delivered.

Read more about what's being done about spam in UNM email in the FastInfo knowledge base.

Email Best Practices

When in doubt, delete. If you don't recognize the sender's address or the content looks suspicious, then delete the email. Do not even open the email if you are not sure of its authenticity.

Never open attachments from suspicious emails.

Create a spam filter. See FastInfo Answer 414.

Forward any non-tagged suspicious emails to spamdrop@unm.edu. Non-tagged email contains no rating percentage in the Subject line, e.g., [SPAM?? 61%].The forwarded email will be reviewed by ITS and the spam filter vendor in order to refine the filter rules.

See Spam and Filtering below and FastInfo Answer 3708.

Spam and Filtering

Fine tuning spam filter rules requires information and access to email content that is normally inaccessible because of privacy concerns. No filtering schemes are perfect and false positives (legitimate email identified as spam) are filtered, while false negatives (spam not identified as spam) are delivered to your inbox.

If you have an @unm.edu or @salud.unm.edu email address, the information provided in your email headers can help ITS fine tune spam filtering rules.

Forwarding potential spam (non-tagged email messages) to ITS allows us to verify its validity and prevent additional harassing and unwanted solicitations. Please forward suspected spam — as an attachment — to spamdrop@unm.edu. See the following instructions :

Webmail

  1. In message view (message open), click Forward.

  2. Address the message to: spamdrop@unm.edu

  3. Click Send.

Groupwise

  1. Right-click the message.

  2. Select Forward as Attachment.

  3. Address the message to: spamdrop@unm.edu

  4. Send the email.

Microsoft Outlook

  1. Create a new email message and address to: spamdrop@unm.edu

  2. Drag and drop the spam from the inbox to the new email message.

  3. Send the email.

Mozilla Thunderbird

  1. In the message view (message open), at the toolbar, select Message|Forward|Attachment.

  2. Add spamdrop@unm.edu to the recipient list.

  3. Send the email.