Dealing with Spam emails

To see a definition of email Spam, please follow this link

Schools on the Sandwell Schools Broadband Network are protected against Spam emails by our subscription to email systems, the subscription is part of the broadband contract.

Spam email filtering is not an exact science, the filtering software scans the incoming email and carries out a number of comparisons, amongst other things, it might:

• compare the sender with a known spammer
• look for certain keywords (such as viagra) in the message content (many spammers now type v1agra instead)
• checks how many other people the message has been sent to.

The filtering software will give a numerical "score" to each aspect tested, then compare the overall score to a predetermined value, and on the basis of the comprison, the email is determined to be spam or not.

Changing the comparison value can lead to spam getting through, or to valid emails being sent to the spam folder instead.

Please note that there is a difference between "spam" emails sent from an unknown and usually anonymous sender and bulk emails sent to multiple users. In the latter case, you should be able to contact the sender directly to ask them to remove your name from their mailing list, or to follow an "unsubscribe" link in the email itself, although some spammers use such replies to determine activity on an email address, and may send you more spam.

An email that evades the spam filter may be spam if it:

• tries to sell viagra or similar products
• tells you to register for a banking service
• tries to sell you software in US$

As stated, most spam will be blocked, but some types of spam may evolve to "fool" the anti-spam software.

It is possible for users to report any emails that they consider spam for consideration. Please forward any such spam emails to spam@emailsystems.com This will allow the supplier to add such spam emails to the spam filters, thereby blocking out future spam from them.