Spam Filtering
All email messages are filtered by the University's Barracuda Spam appliance. This spam filter will either tag marginal spam ([MQSPAM] in subject line of emails or quarantine known spam. Virus infected emails are deleted without notification.
Below are some guidelines on how the spam filter works and how it can be personalised.
Notification & Login
Users receive “Quarantine Summary” email notifications from the Barracuda service. The link provided in these notifications allows users to view their quarantined spam. Alternatively, users may check their Barracuda account by visiting https://barra.its.mq.edu.au/ Your login is <username>@mailbox.ics.mq.edu.au.
You can request a new password at anytime from the Barracuda login screen(1).
Once logged in, users are presented with a summary of their quarantined email. Each message can be either delivered, white listed, deleted, classified as SPAM or not SPAM.
You should change the default notification period from daily to weekly or monthly through the preferences tab. Weekly is probably sufficient for most users.
Quarantine Options
- Deliver: Remove the message from quarantine and deliver the email to the user's Inbox.
- Whitelist: Remove the message from quarantine and deliver it to the user's Inbox. Also, the sender address will be added to the user’s personal whitelist and future messages from this email address will not be quarantined.
- Delete: Remove the message from quarantine.
- Classify as Spam: This allows Barracuda to learn personal spam preferences and to train the user’s personal Bayesian filter. We do NOT recommend you use this option as its known to cause problems.
- Classify as not Spam: See “Classify as Spam” option above.
Quarantine Storage
Quarantined spam older than two weeks should be automatically deleted.
Disabling Filtering (Not Recommended!)
To completely disable spam filtering, login to Barracuda and go to Preferences and click on SPAM Settings. Select "Use System Defaults: No" and set the “Quarantine Score” to 10. Click "Save Changes" button and spam filtering will be disabled for you.
Whitelisting & Blacklisting
Whitelists are lists of addresses which are trusted as non-spam sources users want to receive. Whitelisted addresses are not tested for spam although they will be scanned for viruses. For example, whitelisting a company you conduct business with if you want to receive their regular advertisements and not worry about Barracuda quarantining their messages.
A blacklist is the opposite of a whitelist. Any emails sent from addresses included in blacklists will always be quarantined.
Report a Spam
To report spam which may have passed through the filter untagged, forward it to ithelp@mq.edu.au