Anti-Spam Information

Wake Forest University uses an anti-spam system from Trend Micro Email Reputation Services. To learn more about this system, please review the information below. To contact a Wake Forest office, please use the form below.

About the Anti-Spam System

» Why WFU uses this system

» How it works

» Why some legitimate e-mails are blocked

» What it does and doesn't do

» How to report this problem

» Additional information

The Need for an Anti-Spam System

Unsolicited mass e-mail messages are a nuisance to any recipient. In some cases they may cause embarrassment if an observer sees questionable material in your e-mail inbox. In other cases, they can complicate the retrieval of e-mail from off-campus, which especially becomes a problem for students, faculty, and staff who are traveling when they must download dozens of unsolicited messages before they can view their legitimate messages.

Beyond this, spam consumes significant Wake Forest technology resources. The existing volume of spam already taxes Wake Forest's e-mail infrastructure and the continued growth of spam means that Wake Forest would soon need to upgrade its e-mail hardware to handle the demands placed by illegitimate junk e-mail. An anti-spam system, then, aims to make the best use of Wake Forest financial resources by ensuring that Wake Forest technology resources are used to serve the needs of the Wake Forest community rather than commercial needs of individuals with no affiliation to the University.

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How it Works

Wake Forest uses an anti-spam system obtained through Trend Micro Email Reputation Services. Trend Micro maintains a list of e-mail servers that either serve as a point of origin for spam mail or that are conducive to the sending of spam. As a subscriber to this system, Wake Forest has access to this list, which changes daily as new spam-conducive e-mail servers are identified or as such e-mail servers are fixed to prevent their use for spam.

As each e-mail message arrives, Wake Forest's e-mail system compares its point origin with the Trend Micro list of spam-conducive e-mail servers. If there is no match, the message continues on its route to the appropriate Wake Forest recipient. If there is a match, Wake Forest's e-mail system rejects the message and an automatic notification is delivered to the sender to indicate that the message was not delivered. This message includes text similar to the following: "Mail from 152.17.92.17 refused. See http://spam.wfu.edu/s.cgi?152.17.60.204 or call the Wake Forest University Help Desk at 336-758-4357." The numbers in this message will differ with each sender.

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Why it blocks some messages that aren't spam

The Wake Forest anti-spam will reject any messages that come through an e-mail server that Trend Micro Email Reputation Services has identified as conducive to the sending of "spam," or unsolicited mass e-mail. This list includes e-mail servers that have allowed or could allow other people to send spam.

This does not mean that Wake Forest regards your specific message as spam. Instead, it simply means that the mail server through which your mail was delivered to Wake Forest may or could allow spam to be sent. As a result, Wake Forest's e-mail system returns mail from this source to the sender. In the same way that restaurant guests might return their meals to the kitchen upon learning that one of the chefs has a highly contagious disease - since they cannot be certain that the chef who prepared their meals was not infected - Wake Forest's anti-spam system rejects any messages arriving from spam-conducive e-mail servers because they came through a contaminated source.

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Limitations: What this system does and doesn't do

There is no perfect solution for preventing spam and Trend Micro has some limitations:

• Some spam mail may still reach Wake Forest if Trend Micro has not yet identified the originating e-mail server as conducive to spam.

• Some legitimate messages may not reach Wake Forest. As outlined above, Trend Micro analyzes e-mail based on the e-mail server through which it reaches Wake Forest. Thus, it cannot tell if a legitimate message has been sent through a spam-conducive e-mail server and thus would reject any such messages.

• Apparent inconsistencies in blocking of messages. For a variety of reasons, it is possible for someone to send a message to Wake Forest successfully on some occasions, without any anti-spam issues, but for his or her messages to be rejected by the anti-spam system on other occasions. Two of the most likely reasons for this are the following:

The e-mail server through which your mail was sent to Wake Forest has recently been added to or removed from Trend Micro continuously updated list of spam-conducive e-mail servers. As new spam-conducive e-mail servers are reported, they are added to the Trend Micro list; similarly, as e-mail administrators eliminate configuration problems that facilitate spam mail and report these changes to Trend Micro, Trend Micro removes these e-mail servers from its spam-friendly list, thus again allowing delivery of mail from these servers.

Your e-mail service provider may have multiple outbound e-mail servers, some of which Trend Micro has identified as contributing to spam and others which do not. Outgoing messages may go through a different outbound e-mail server at different times. If a message goes through a spam-conducive server, it will be rejected, but if it goes through a server that is not conducive to the sending of spam, it will reach its destination at Wake Forest.

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Solving the Problem: Getting off the Trend Micro list

If your mail has been blocked by Wake Forest's anti-spam system, you should notify your e-mail service provider. Major e-mail providers will want to know if their e-mail system has been identified as conducive to spam, since this can create a major inconvenience for their customers.

To report the problem, forward the rejection message to the e-mail administrator at your organization or your Internet service provider. In many cases, the address for this will be "postmaster@" followed by the domain name of the organization. For instance, if your e-mail address was "john@email.com," you may wish to send the notification to "postmaster@email.com." Your e-mail administrator can work with Trend Micro to make the necessary changes to be removed from Trend Micro' list of spam-friendly e-mail servers. How quickly this happens will depend significantly on your e-mail administrator, though most major e-mail service providers will respond promptly to any such reports.

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Additional Information

If you would like other information concerning Wake Forest's anti-spam system, please contact the Wake Forest Information Systems Help Desk at (336) 758-4357.

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