Laurence,
On December 22, 2008, all incoming e-mail will be processed for spam. This will happen before forwarding occurs. Knowledge base article 10902 at help.msu.edu explains this further.
Katherine Ball
Quoting "Laurence Bates" <[log in to unmask]>:
> This appears to be a significant issue that may have been discussed earlier
> but I was not aware of it. Some of our users, including myself, were
> previously advised to use filtering as a way of having the MSU email system
> remove as much spam as possible before forwarding the email to local college
> email servers. That process has worked very well up to now but from what I
> can gather, it appears that it will be removed in 19 days. If that is the
> case then colleges will need to significantly beef up their spam checking
> capabilities and 19 days isn't long enough notice to make that transition
> seamless.
>
>
>
> Could we have the forwarding step moved to after what is named stage 7 in
> the following document so that the spam checking could continue to be done
> centrally as much as possible.
>
>
>
> http://techbase.msu.edu/article.asp?id=4733
> <http://techbase.msu.edu/article.asp?id=4733&service=techbase>
> &service=techbase
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: MSU Network Administrators Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Brian Martinez
> Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 9:44 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [MSUNAG] Autoforwarding in the new mail system
>
>
>
> John Gorentz wrote:
>
>> I'm wondering how to interpret this ominous-sounding item in the FAQ for
> the new mail system:
>
>>
>
> *snip*
>
>> That makes it sound as though autoforwarding will have to be repaired
> manually when the new mail system goes on line -- that the new system won't
> inherit the old's autoforwarding. *more cutting*
>
> Users of mail.msu.edu who have set a traditional .forward will have
>
> their .forwards "swept up" into our database where Exim will soon read
>
> this type of information from. A traditional forward being the one set
>
> at http://mail.msu.edu/ within the 'Preferences' and the setting being
>
> at the bottom left.
>
>
>
> People who forward their email non-traditionally, that is in the
>
> non-supported method of using a Mail Filter (seen under 'Filters' on
>
> http://mail.msu.edu/ ) will have to correct this by going into the web
>
> interface and changing it over to the traditional type of .forward
>
> described above. This is mentioned in the question:
>
>
>
> I have a filter in the legacy service that auto-forwards my e-mail. Can
>
> I do the same in the new service?
>
> No. Please use the e-mail forwarding function to handle your
>
> auto-forwarding.
>
>
>
>> And how is this consistent with the idea that the old mail system will
> continue to be available for 6 months after the new one is turned on?
>
> The old mail system will be available at http://old.mail.msu.edu/
>
> starting on December 22nd, however certain preferences/features will be
>
> grayed-out; namely the Filters feature and of course, the preferences.
>
> These items will still be accessible to the mail team should problems
>
> need to be filed regarding them.
>
>> I understand how that is done for the web client, but what about the
> mail servers?
>
>>
>
> The only thing of great note that is changing is the web interface. We
>
> are deprecating some older front-end machines and replacing them with
>
> newer hardware. We are also adding to our overall total number of servers.
>
>> Will users get to choose the moment when their mail is handled by the
> new server?
>
>>
>
> The will get to choose December 22nd, 2008 :-)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ./brm - MSU Postmaster
>
>
Katherine Ball
Michigan State University
ATS Communications
324 Computer Center
East Lansing MI 48824