I have just sent out a campus-wide announcement with copious details on the new spam filtering mechanism that has just been enabled. The user settings for affecting how your spam is handled are visible in the middle of the page to the left of this announcement. I'm also including two relevant excerpts from the email for those seeing this for the first time:

Enter your email login name and password and select one of these three options for the "spam should be" line:

1) discarded before I see it
This is the most effective and extreme choice. Anything our system tags as spam will be deleted before it ever lands in your inbox. Dead. Kaput. History. Down for the dirt nap. You will never see it or even know it ever made it this far. It can also not be retrieved. Honestly, I think this is the best option and, for most people, the "risk" associated with it regarding false positives will often be outweighed by the frustration of dealing with spam. Keep in mind that the sender will NOT know it was deleted, either... so that phone call you get won't be "my emails to you keep getting returned", but rather "Hey, jackass! Why don't you ever respond to my emails?!". Regardless of the caveats, I'd suggest this to anyone who has watched the spam tagging for a few days and gotten comfortable with the overall accuracy.

2) moved to my spam folder
For those who want their inbox uncluttered yet still want to set aside some time to wallow in pure spam once in a while, this one's for you. Rather than delete the messages, anything tagged as spam will be shifted into your spam folder and held until you delete it yourself later. This gives you a chance to at least glance over the spam pile every few hours, days, weeks or months (whatever your quota and psyche can withstand) and flush it all in one satisfying, cathartic click of a button. It's safer than option one but marginally more of a hassle. Obviously, false positives can be fished from the vast sea of putrescence if you take the time to really poke through the spam folder before flushing it. What spam folder, you say? Why, the one this rule will create for you automatically if you select the option. You'll find it in your folder list in webmail after selecting it. OS X Mail users will see it the next time they restart the program. Thunderbird users might need to subscribe to it. Whatever the case, any IMAP program should see it after you've made the selection.

3) left alone in my INBOX
This is the least appealing option and you really don't want to do it. Ok, maybe you do. It depends on whether you get a ton of false positives (highly unlikely), are extremely paranoid about false positives, love spam, or possibly find the spam scoreboards so entertaining that you want them front and center every time you open your mail. In a nutshell, this option does precisely squat and you'll keep getting all the spam you currently get.
Please note that the tagging and scoring of spam will take place regardless on all SBC accounts. Making no selection from the list above or selecting the third option will not stop the tagging and scoring. Nothing will be auto-deleted or moved, however, and no mail will ever be prevented from arriving in your inbox if you go with the third option.

Q: What is the "My score threshold" option? I see it below where I choose what should be done with my spam.

A: Everything processed by the system will be given a numeric score. Anything totaling five or above will be tagged as spam. What gets done with that mail is decided by you (as answered in the previous question). If, for some reason, you decide that you only want spam with a score HIGHER than five dealt with automatically, this is where you make that selection. Currently I have this option set to accept scores between 5 (the default if you make no selection) and "21 or beyond".

Honestly, you most likely won't need to ever adjust this unless you're just big into turning all the knobs and pushing all the buttons. I can relate. My suggestion is to leave the system alone for a few days and get a sense of what percentage of your mail is tagged as spam and the general range of scores they receive. If, for some reason, you decide you only want the the more spammy of your spam - let's say things that score 14 or higher - to be deleted and lesser ones to remain in your inbox, select 14 from this list.

If you select "left alone in my inbox" as the action, though, this option will have no relevance as you're not asking the system to do anything with the spam (doing nothing with nothing results in... uh... nothing).

Enjoy!
- Aaron

Word, Excel and PowerPoint Viewing
August 31, 2005 | Aaron Mahler

Another task I had a chance to scratch from my list today is the addition of built-in viewers for Word, Excel and PowerPoint attachments.

You can now view (simplified yet complete) versions of these attachments within webmail without needing to download the files to the desktop and open an application. Simply click on the link of the attachment (the filename) as it appears at the top of your message. The ability to download the attachment, of course, still remains in the form of the usual icon to the right of the filename link ().

Enjoy!
- Aaron

Address Book Info & News
August 31, 2005 | Aaron Mahler

As promised (and thanks to Chris and Elisabeth), the instructions for importing your address book from the old webmail system are now online:

Webmail Address Book Migration

Also, I'm working diligently to resolve the problems that have caused outages on Webmail lately. Resource requirements on the new system are vastly higher than predicted and real-world use has exceeded anything we could have tested prior to making this system public. A substantial upgrade of the server memory is on the way and other adjustments are being made constantly to balance everything out. I'm sorry for the hassles, but we'll smooth out the bumps ASAP.

Thanks!
- Aaron Mahler