Dealing with Messages identified as Spam

The University operates a Spam Identification Service which analyses received messages and detects much of the unsolicited email coming in to the University.

Any emails identified as spam are ‘quarantined’ and listed in a Spam Report email that is sent to you a maximum of four times a day. The subject of the email reads iCritical Spam Report followed by the date/time.

If you want any of these messages delivered to your Inbox, simply select Release this mail next to them to release them from quarantine.

Each Spam Report email lists messages received since the last report was sent to you.

Emails identified as spam are kept in quarantine for sixty days and then deleted.

iCritical Upgrade

See how the new Spam Report email looks and how to Preview your emails in quarantine.

Questions?

  • During the day you might receive at least a dozen spam emails. With this system, you’ll only receive four emails per day maximum from the spam software.
  • Your spam will automatically be deleted for you. You just check the spam report email and select any that you don’t regard as spam to have them delivered.
  • You have control over whether you want to receive any messages identified as spam – offensive emails that are identified as spam won’t be directly delivered to your Inbox.
  • Some spam emails can be large and clog up your mailbox. The emails listing your spam messages will be small and easily identified by the email subject.
  • Occasionally, genuine messages are incorrectly identified as spam, so we don’t want to delay delivery of these for too long.
  • Release them using the link on the iCritical Spam Report, then contact the Service Desk with the mail address of the sender. We can configure iCritical to treat messages from this sender as non-spam, either when sent to your or generally.
  • Computers are not nearly as good at detecting spam as people. You will inevitably get a few, but it shouldn't be more than about 1 in 20 messages (without filtering, the figure is more like 4 out of 5 spam). However, if you keep getting junk mail from one sender, contact the IT Service Desk on 01902-322000 or ext. 2000 and let them know. They can arrange for that sender address to be blocked.
  • Don't. There is no legitimate reason for anyone to need this information, and anyone asking for it is attempting to compromise your account. Just discard the message. They are unfortunately quite common, and a small number will get through our filtering.