SpamBuster Options | Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering

Options

You can customize SpamBuster in a number of ways. For instance, instead of having your spam sent to a central quarantine, you can elect to have it 'passed through', along with the rest of your mail. It will have the spam header tags, along with a special "Spam: YES" tag so you can easily deal with it using whatever filtering tools your email client provides. To make it even easier to filter spam with your mail client, you can have the Subject line modified (Outlook users take special note! Also see the SpamBuster FAQ at the bottom of the main SpamBuster page.) You can specify certain senders as being on your own "good/bad lists", irrespective of how their message might othewise score as spam. Or you can opt-out of spam filtering altogether. You can elect to use grey-listing (which should be a pretty effective scheme.) And of course, you can adjust your spam threshold.

You can change your SpamBuster options at the same place where you review your quarantined spam - look at the bottom of the page. (Links at the left of this page.)

The options include:

Use Javascript On or off (default: on)
Affects how messages are displayed by the Spam Viewer. (default: Javascript enabled.) Can be set separately for each machine (and browser) a user uses. (Because this setting is stored as a cookie, not in the Preference Store.) So, you could set this differently at home and in your office.

Default disposition Discard, Keep, Unspam (default: Discard)
When you view your quarantine, each piece of spam can be acted upon (disposed of) in one of three ways. This option determines which of those dispositions is selected by default when your quarantine is presented. (You can, of course, change the disposition of any given piece of spam, as you review them.)

Default sort
This option controls the order that messages in your quarantine are initially displayed. While viewing your quarantine, you can also sort by any field by clicking on the column headings.

Scan my mail for spam Yes or No (default: Yes )
Allows you to opt-out of SpamBuster scanning altogether. Your incoming email will not be scanned, and it will not be tagged. It will simply be passed directly through the mail system and into your mailbox as if the SpamBuster filters did not exist. (This is completely different from the 'pass-through' feature!) If you have grey-listing enabled and scanning disabled, grey-listing will still take place.

My spam threshold -100 to 1000 (default: 5.0 )
Spam scores are typically in the range of about 0-20, although they can go much higher, and can even be negative. Any email with a score equal to or above your personal threshold will be labeled as spam. Any score below your threshold will be considered "legitimate" (aka "ham".)

Modify Subject lines Yes or No (default: No)
When on, any mail identified as spam (i.e., above your threshold) will have a special string ( "*****SPAM*****" ) inserted at the beginning of the Subject line of the message. When off (default), the Subject line is left unmodified. The X-UWCSE-Spam headers will be inserted into the header of the message regardless of the setting of this option.

Use Greylisting Yes or No (default: No)
When greylisting is enabled, the first time a message from a given sender is received, it will be rejected, and subsequent resends will be accepted. All legitimate mail handlers will retransmit a rejected message, usually with a 30-minute delay (this is a mechanism in the Internet mail transport protocol that is intended to allow the receiving mail transport agent to throttle its incoming load). A significant amount of spam spews from very simple mailers (embedded in spyware, for instance) that do not implement this retransmit protocol, so this turns out to be an effective spam-fighting technique – at least for now. A downside is that a minor delay may be introduced in the arrival of the very first email from each correspondant. This would be undesirable for webstite registrations, where a confirmation is sent via email, or a password reminder that comes via email. But you can always disable grey-listing temporarily when the need arises.

Action for my Spam Quarantine or Pass-thru (default: Pass-thru)
Normally, any mail identified as spam – according to your spam threshold – will be diverted to a central Spam Quarantine, and will not wind up in your standard inbox. If you select "pass-through", your incoming mail will still be scanned, tagged, and spam (as specified by your threshold) will be identified with a special header tag. (The default of "pass-thru" was chosen so you can make an explicit choice about diverting your incoming mail stream, rather than have some of your mial suddenly and mysteriously get diverted elsewhere without your express knowledge.) The 'pass-thru' option will allow you to filter spam using whatever filtering tools your email client provides. For instance, you could divert it into your own Spam folder in your mail client. This may not be a good option when you are traveling, or if you use a dial-up connection to read your mail, since it may cause all your spam to be downloaded to your email client before it is filtered. Your mileage may vary!

Auto-discard 1 week-4 months (default: 3 months)
Any spam (as well as false-positives – legitimate messages) in your quarantine will be automatically and silently discarded if it is older than the specified age. This happens whether you have reviewed quarantined messages or not. This feature cannot be disabled, but you do have some control over how long spam is kept before it is auto-discarded.

Treat all non-English email as spam On or off (default: off)
If enabled, all messages identified as not being in English will be identified as spam. The excellent but not infallible TextCat tool is used to guess the language.

Email from these addresses is always/never spam Sets of email addresses (default: certain addresses within the university)
This pair of options allows you to establish certain addresses as being the source of email that is always or never spam. The bad list is useful for creating a "twitlist": a set of addresses from whom you never wish to receive email. The latter is useful for elminating "false positives" -- addresses from which you receive desired mail that is falsely identified as spam. The addresses you enter here can contain wildcards, but are not full regular expressions. The work the same way as "filename globbing" does in Unix shells, where, for example, a '*' matches zero or more characters and a '?' matches a single character. By deafult, a number of specific addresses within the university are included in your "good list".

Use Javascript	`On or off (default: on)` Affects how messages are displayed by the Spam Viewer. (default: Javascript enabled.) Can be set separately for each machine (and browser) a user uses. (Because this setting is stored as a cookie, not in the Preference Store.) So, you could set this differently at home and in your office.
Default disposition	`Discard, Keep, Unspam (default: Discard)` When you view your quarantine, each piece of spam can be acted upon (disposed of) in one of three ways. This option determines which of those dispositions is selected by default when your quarantine is presented. (You can, of course, change the disposition of any given piece of spam, as you review them.)
Default sort	This option controls the order that messages in your quarantine are initially displayed. While viewing your quarantine, you can also sort by any field by clicking on the column headings.
Scan my mail for spam	`Yes or No (default: Yes )` Allows you to opt-out of SpamBuster scanning altogether. Your incoming email will not be scanned, and it will not be tagged. It will simply be passed directly through the mail system and into your mailbox as if the SpamBuster filters did not exist. (This is completely different from the 'pass-through' feature!) If you have grey-listing enabled and scanning disabled, grey-listing will still take place.
My spam threshold	`-100 to 1000 (default: 5.0 )` Spam scores are typically in the range of about 0-20, although they can go much higher, and can even be negative. Any email with a score equal to or above your personal threshold will be labeled as spam. Any score below your threshold will be considered "legitimate" (aka "ham".)
Modify Subject lines	`Yes or No (default: No)` When on, any mail identified as spam (i.e., above your threshold) will have a special string ( "***SPAM***" ) inserted at the beginning of the Subject line of the message. When off (default), the Subject line is left unmodified. The X-UWCSE-Spam headers will be inserted into the header of the message regardless of the setting of this option.
Use Greylisting	`Yes or No (default: No)` When greylisting is enabled, the first time a message from a given sender is received, it will be rejected, and subsequent resends will be accepted. All legitimate mail handlers will retransmit a rejected message, usually with a 30-minute delay (this is a mechanism in the Internet mail transport protocol that is intended to allow the receiving mail transport agent to throttle its incoming load). A significant amount of spam spews from very simple mailers (embedded in spyware, for instance) that do not implement this retransmit protocol, so this turns out to be an effective spam-fighting technique – at least for now. A downside is that a minor delay may be introduced in the arrival of the very first email from each correspondant. This would be undesirable for webstite registrations, where a confirmation is sent via email, or a password reminder that comes via email. But you can always disable grey-listing temporarily when the need arises.
Action for my Spam	`Quarantine or Pass-thru (default: Pass-thru)` Normally, any mail identified as spam – according to your spam threshold – will be diverted to a central Spam Quarantine, and will not wind up in your standard inbox. If you select "pass-through", your incoming mail will still be scanned, tagged, and spam (as specified by your threshold) will be identified with a special header tag. (The default of "pass-thru" was chosen so you can make an explicit choice about diverting your incoming mail stream, rather than have some of your mial suddenly and mysteriously get diverted elsewhere without your express knowledge.) The 'pass-thru' option will allow you to filter spam using whatever filtering tools your email client provides. For instance, you could divert it into your own Spam folder in your mail client. This may not be a good option when you are traveling, or if you use a dial-up connection to read your mail, since it may cause all your spam to be downloaded to your email client before it is filtered. Your mileage may vary!
Auto-discard	`1 week-4 months (default: 3 months)` Any spam (as well as false-positives – legitimate messages) in your quarantine will be automatically and silently discarded if it is older than the specified age. This happens whether you have reviewed quarantined messages or not. This feature cannot be disabled, but you do have some control over how long spam is kept before it is auto-discarded.
Treat all non-English email as spam	`On or off (default: off)` If enabled, all messages identified as not being in English will be identified as spam. The excellent but not infallible TextCat tool is used to guess the language.
Email from these addresses is always/never spam	`Sets of email addresses` (default: certain addresses within the university) This pair of options allows you to establish certain addresses as being the source of email that is always or never spam. The bad list is useful for creating a "twitlist": a set of addresses from whom you never wish to receive email. The latter is useful for elminating "false positives" -- addresses from which you receive desired mail that is falsely identified as spam. The addresses you enter here can contain wildcards, but are not full regular expressions. The work the same way as "filename globbing" does in Unix shells, where, for example, a '*' matches zero or more characters and a '?' matches a single character. By deafult, a number of specific addresses within the university are included in your "good list".