University Systems help centre
Email filtering for @uvic.ca email addresses
Step 1: Edge filtering and user controllable spam filtering
Edge Filtering
Mail first goes through 1 of 7 Inbound Edge mail servers for mail filtering and mail routing:
- Various Sendmail anti-spam measures, including rate and number of connections throttling to stop spammers from “slamming” our edge servers.
- Various mimedefang-filter and anti-spam measures including:
- Blocklist lookups
- Antivirus checks
- Greylisting
- Spam detection
- We filter some file-types commonly used for malicious purposes; if you have any challenges receiving an attachment you believe is legitimate, please contact the Computer Help Desk.
User controllable spam filtering
Users can also set up their own spam filtering on email, manage junk mail settings or create rules in Outlook to filter messages:
- Microsoft support article: Overview of the Junk Email Filter
- Microsoft support: Manage email messages by using rules
Step 2: Mail routing
Mail is considered filtered at this point and routing occurs:
- Email addressed to faculty and staff Exchange email users is directed to Exchange servers.
- All non—exchange email users get routed to the Student Email server.
Step 3: Processing/delivery
Processing/delivery to Exchange email clients
- Exchange email gets filtered inbound and outbound by the Exchange servers. This includes antivirus, malware, spam and phishing filtering, as well as all macros, select file types and known bad URLs.
- If you have any challenges sending or receiving an attachment you believe is legitimate, please contact the Computer Help Desk.
- Mail at this point is either delivered to the Exchange account or rerouted based on forwarding rules to another email address.
Processing/delivery to Student Email users
- Email gets processed by the Student Email server. This includes anti-virus and file type checks.
- Mail at this point is either delivered to local account or rerouted based on aliases or email forwarding to other email addresses.