For your consideration of changed wording, I would suggest replacing the first sentence of the message with something like: X-Spam-Report: Spam detection software, running on the system "mx13.mail.msu.edu", has evaluated this incoming email for characteristics that might indicate it is spam. If it was determined likely to be spam, the text *****SPAM***** was added to the subject line. I would quibble with the phrase in the second original sentence that says "The original message has been attached to this" (as far as I can tell it is not attached in the sense most people mean when they refer to an email attachment, it's simply present as a normal message body), but most people won't pay any attention to that, so it probably doesn't matter. I also question the usefulness of the "Content preview" section (only a geeky MSUNAG reader would download mail headers without the bodies and then examine the hidden X- headers to preview the content to help decide whether something is really spam or not ;-), but it's also not a big enough deal to argue about. -----Original Message----- From: MSU Network Administrators Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David McFarlane Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2008 12:13 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [MSUNAG] "Possible spam" messages Talked with Brian Martinez on the phone, here is my understanding of the situation (of course any mistakes in this account are my own fault and not Brian's). Prior to Mon 22 Dec 2008, incoming e-mail got checked against the user's settings. If they enabled campus spam filtering then the e-mail got filtered. If it then reached a high enough score then it got labelled and processed as spam, otherwise it got passed on with little comment. Starting Mon 22 Dec 2008, user spam settings are ignored. All mail to <recipient>@msu.edu addresses that comes from <sender>@msu.edu addresses does *not* go through the spam filter, as we presume that intra- @msu.edu e-mail is not spam (and if so will be handled through other administrative mechanisms, as in the Kara Spencer case, see http://www.statenews.com/index.php/article/2008/12/asmsu_association_directo r_found_guilty_of_misusing_resources ). All other incoming e-mail goes through the campus spam filter, AND (this is the point that kept getting missed) the filter now adds the "possible spam" message that we have been seeing. E.g., since <sender>@list.msu.edu does not come from @msu.edu, all the MSUNAG e-mail now gets the "possible spam" header. Since messages from @msu.edu do not get filtered, it could be said that these addresses are whitelisted, but I do not know if that is technically accurate. Otherwise, there is no whitelist. So something *did* change in spam filtering, namely the boilerplate "possible spam" message got added to *all* messages that go through the spam filter. Users whose e-mail readers hide the headers will never see this, and Eudora users like me may add "TabooHeaders=X-Spam-Report" to the settings in their Eudora.ini file to hide these (thanks Chris for that tip!). Following the discussion here on MSUNAG, ATS is looking into tweaking this, including setting a higher threshold for "possible spam" or changing the wording of the message. [Editorial aside: This is exactly why it was a good thing for the mail team to roll out this switch while the bulk of users were gone.] Tbanks to the mail team and everyone for getting us through the transition to a better mail system. -- dkm, Professional Faultfinder