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Spam Filter Troubleshooting

If the Spam filtering is not working as expected, the following troubleshooting steps may assist you is resolving the problem.

Server-side Spam filters

Error: Your mail host does not have server-side filtering available.

You will receive this error message if your account doesn't reside on one of the new student email servers. This is most likely because your account hasn't yet been migrated. If you are still receiving this error message after the end of August 2004 and your account does NOT reside on the South African student email server (http://mail1.zaf.monash.edu.au), please report the error to the ITS Service Desk to be investigated.

The Spam Filter interface keeps asking me to log in

Please ensure that you have internet 'cookies' enabled in your web-browser. The interface relies on 'cookie' information for authentication when you click on various parts of the tool. If cookies are disabled you must continuously authenticate.

Test emails aren't filtered into my 'Spam' folder

There are several steps that should be verified:

  1. You have waited at least 5 minutes before sending the test email
  2. You have clicked on the 'Enable spam filtering' checkbox within the Spam-filtering interface
  3. The test email you sent had a 'Spam Score' greater then that set in the Spam-filtering interface For example if you set your Spam Threshold to be Medium (5 stars) you will need to send a test email with a score of 5 or higher

Server-side white-listing

Test white-list emails are still filtered into my 'Spam' folder

There are several steps that should be verified:

  1. You have waited at least 5 minutes before sending the test email
  2. You have clicked on the 'Enable Whitelist' checkbox within the Whitelist interface
  3. Verify that the FROM address you are sending matches that which you added via the Whitelist interface. Note that the email addresses/domains are NOT case sensitive.

Client-side Spam filters & whitelisting (Staff Only)

Test emails aren't filtered into my 'Spam' folder

If you have followed the instructions on setting up a mail filter correctly and your Spam filter is still not working please also check the following points:

  1. Ensure you are using asterisks (*); which can be inputted by selecting the Shift + 8 key at the same time.
  2. The Spam filter must be at the top of your filter list in order for it to be matched first before any of your other filters.
  3. If some Spam messages are being filtered and some aren't then check that the X-Spam-Level is 5 asterisks (*****) or above. If not adjust your filter accordingly. The X-Spam-Level header information can be accessed by selecting View, Headers, All in Netscape Messenger or Mozilla Mail.
Enabling logging on the 'client-side' to determine why filters aren't working

You can enable logging within your email client to determine why your filters aren't working using the following steps.

** For Netscape 4.7X **

  1. Select Edit, Message Filters.
  2. Then select Log filter use
  3. After some of your mail has been filtered select View Log from this dialog box to track the actions of your mail filter(s).

** For Mozilla 1.4 **

  1. Select Tools, Message Filters.
  2. Click Filter Log in the top right hand side of the dialog box.
  3. Then click Enable the Filter Log checkbox.
  4. Return to this dialog box after some of your mail has been filtered to track the actions of your mail filter(s).

Testing Spam filtering and white-lists

ITS has provided two tools to test Spam filtering. Please ensure that you wait at least 5 minutes to test any changes you may have made to the Spam filtering settings or any 'Whitelisted' addresses.

The first tool is designed to verify that your Spam filters are functional and allow you to specify the Spam score of the test 'Spam' email that you send. That way you can verify that 'Spam' emails are filtered into your non-Spam folder and vice-versa.

Spam filter test

The second tool is designed to verify that your white-list rules are functional and allow you to specify the 'FROM/Sender' address of the test Spam emails that you send. If the whitelist is not working as you expect then the email will be filtered into your 'Spam' folder (assuming you have Spam filtering enabled).

Whitelist filter test