Blocking Spam in UW Exchange

The UW uses a SPAM filtering system that rates all incoming emails and embeds a code that rates how likely it is to be SPAM. Using this system is recommended as it does a better job than the free SPAM filter built into Outlook, and is pre-configured to allow emails from senders at the UW. Instructions follow:

Disable the Spam Filter in Your Client

First the "junk" mail filter in the client software (Outlook, Entourage and Outlook Web Access) should be turned off:

In Outlook:

  1. Actions
  2. Junk e-Mail
  3. Junk E-Mail Options
  4. Select first button to turn off filtering

In Entourage:

  1. Tools
  2. Junk E-mail Protection
  3. Select first button to turn off filtering

How to use the spam scoring

This is done by a rule, set up in OWA. All "rule" creation should be done only in Outlook Web Access, to guarantee a set that works only on the server and can be managed in one place without conflict. In addition, rules will only work properly when set up in Internet Explorer. They do not work well with the light versions of OWA that run in non-IE browsers.

Access OWA at: https://exchange.washington.edu/owa

Using Outlook Web Access you can easily create a custom rule that emulates the behavior of the "EDM" junk filter rules on the UW Deskmail system.

  1. If you are using "cache mode on" in Outlook, turn off junk mail handling in Outlook (with "cache mode off" Outlook can't turn on junk mail filtering anyway). Similar steps should be taken for Entourage (junk mail handling off).
  2. In Outook Web Access, turn off Junk E-mail filtering:
    • select Options:
      Options
    • select "Junk E-Mail"
    • set "Do not filter junk e-mail"
  3. In Outlook Web Access, construct a custom rule to handle junk mail filtering using a rule designed to emulate junk mail filtering done under the UW Deskmail "EDM" system:
    • Click Options
    • Click Rules:
      Rules
    • Click New Rule:
      New Rules
      1. Click “Create a new rule for arriving messages”
      2. If prompted, choose Delete Disabled Rules
      3. Click “If the message includes specific words…”
      4. Click “In the message header”
      5. Click on the blue “specific words” on the left
      6. Enter “X-Uwash-Spam: Gauge=XXXXXX” (No quotes, but dashes, spaces and capitalization are important)
      7. Click “Add”, then “Ok”
      8. Click “Move, copy or delete…”
      9. Click “Move the message to the specified folder”
      10. Click “specified” to the left
      11. Choose “Junk E-Mail” and click “OK”
      12. Click “Perform other actions…”
      13. Choose “Stop processing more rules”

You can name the rule as you like, such as "Emulate EDM spam rule"

This rule will apply a threshold of "60" for spam rejection, messages scoring 60 or more will be moved to Junk. To change the threshold, add or subtract "X"s from the string. For example, 8 "X"s (XXXXXXXX) would produce a threshold of "80" and messages scoring 80 or more would be moved to Junk. The higher the threshold the less likely you are to move messages to Junk that you might really want, and, conversely, the more likely you are to see "junk" messages in your Inbox.

While you can construct mail handling rules in either Outlook or OWA they do tend to conflict with each other and you'll want to pick one or the other. Using OWA guarantees you're creating "server side" rules that will function even when Outlook is not running and the rules can be modified from multiple locations (usina OWA) not just one desktop.