By Megan Speakes

You may have noticed that the amount of spam that gets delivered to your e-mail inbox changes over time. This is due to the nature of spam — there are people behind the messages and each time one of their tactics is successfully blocked, they develop a new one to bypass the blockade.

While OIT has provided barriers to spam coming into its e-mail systems for years, this summer, we made a change to our defensive strategy. In the past, any message claiming to come from an @umd.edu address was delivered without passing through university spam filters. Now, all incoming e-mail messages go through the spam filters unless they are sent from an e-mail server on the University of Maryland’s computer network.

This means that all messages sent from outside systems (such as Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo), even those using an @umd.edu address as the sending address, are evaluated by spam filters before being delivered to your e-mail account.

Junk mail filtering is done by computers, not humans, so it is possible that legitimate e-mails may occasionally be sent straight to junk mail folders. We recommend that you check your junk folders regularly for legitimate e-mail. If a legitimate message from a sender you trust is filtered into your junk mail folder, you can ensure that future messages from that sender are delivered to your inbox by adding the sender to your allow list. To learn how to do this in your Mail@umd account using Webmail, please visit www.oit.umd.edu/email/gettingstarted/webmailtutorial-manage.htm.

We will continue to monitor the university’s junk mail load and take steps to keep it manageable for the university community. Additional information about this effort is available via FAQs at www.oit.umd.edu/spam. Please contact the OIT Help Desk at 301.405.1500 if you have any questions.