Your U-Mail Account employs state-of-the-art filtering technology to detect and quarantine unsolicited bulk e-mail (also known as "spam"). The filtering system heuristically scans each message received, detects potential spam content, and assigns the message a spam "score" based on what was detected. If this spam score exceeds a customizable threshold value, the message is marked as spam.

When a message is marked as spam, "[SPAM]" is added to the subject and the message is delivered into a special "junk-mail" mailbox. If you prefer, you can have spam delivered into your inbox or deleted upon arrival. Any message in your junk-mail mailbox that's older than 30 days is automatically deleted.

The spam filtering system is not fool-proof, and there will occasionally be false-positives (messages that are not spam which have been incorrectly tagged). To prevent university-related messages from being marked as spam, the system will bypass any address ending in "ucsb.edu". However, we recommend that you review any spam-marked messages before deleting them.

The filtering system is highly configurable to suit personal spam tolerance levels and desired spam reporting methods. Customization of your spam filtering preferences is handled through the WebAccess Spam Filtering tool in the Account Tools section. From the spam filtering you can decide where you want spam-tagged messages to be delivered, specify addresses never to be tagged as spam, as well as raise or lower your "spam threshold".

Contact the Help Desk if you have any questions about the spam filtering service.

• Because you're filtering spam does that mean someone's reading my mail?
• I like my spam. How do I disable spam filtering?
• Certain spammers are sending me mail that's not being caught by the spam filter. What can I do?
• Messages sent from one of my friends are incorrectly being filtered as spam. How do I correct this?
• How can I automatically delete any messages that have been tagged as spam?
• How do I decide how to adjust my spam tolerance?

Because you're filtering spam does that mean someone's reading my mail?
No. The spam filtering mechanism is handled purely by software. No messages are ever read. In fact, the University of California Electronic Communications Policy forbids it.

I like my spam. How do I disable spam filtering?
In the Spam Filtering module within MyAccount, adjust your spam tolerance setting with the most tolerant (furthest to right).

Certain spammers are sending me mail that's not being caught by the spam filter. What can i do?
The Spam Filtering "black-list" feature is provided so that you can manually add the addresses of known spammers. Any message coming from an address in your black-list will automatically be filtered as spam.

Messages sent from one of my friends are incorrectly being filtered as spam. How do I correct this?
A "white-list" feature is provided in the Spam Filtering module to protect against such false-positives. Add the addresses of your non-spammer friends to your white-list and messages coming from these address will never be filtered.

How can I automatically delete any messages that have been tagged as spam?
Because the spam filtering intelligence is not perfect, we strongly recommend that you view these messages before deleting them outright. However, we provide a delete upon arrival option within the WebAccess Spam Filtering tools. Alternately, if you have messages delivered to your junk-mail folder they'll be deleted automatically after 30 days.

How do I decide how to adjust my spam tolerance?
As described above, the spam filter gives each message a score based on spam content. This score is compared to your personal spam tolerance to decide whether a given message should be filtered as spam. To get a better idea of how to adjust your spam tolerance, read the scoring report that's added to each spam message. The spam report allows you to investigate why each messages was tagged the way it was and see the scores each message was given. This should help in figuring out how to set a spam tolerance setting appropriate to your taste.