Beginning of fall means end of most junk e-mail

Just in time to help you get a fresh start for fall quarter, NU's new E-mail Defense System (EDS) was launched University-wide on October 3. EDS is NUIT's system for filtering junk e-mail messages and network threats before they can reach the central Northwestern e-mail servers (casbah, hecky, lulu and merle).

If you have a Northwestern e-mail account and use a northwestern.edu e-mail address, the E-mail Defense System will filter your e-mail. (Certain other Northwestern e-mail addresses will also be filtered. For a complete list, visit <www.it.northwestern.edu/security/eds/>.) You will see an appreciable decrease in the amount of junk e-mail. To help keep you secure, the EDS screens most "phishing" attempts and malicious high-risk attachments. EDS has already been filtering viruses from NU e-mail for the past several months, and will continue to do so.


A screen shot of NU's E-mail Defense System.

The EDS is very effective but it won't catch everything, so you may still find a few unwanted messages in your inbox. NUIT has also set EDS filtering restrictions below the highest possible levels in support of academic freedom and the varying nature of work at the University, because e-mail that's "junk" to some recipients could be of interest to others. To help keep your inbox free of unwanted e-mail, NUIT recommends using filtering capabilities in your desktop e-mail client (e.g. Outlook, Outlook Express, Apple Mail, Eudora) as a supplement to EDS.

You'll have a chance to review any junk e-mail that EDS blocks from your inbox. The system puts your junk messages into quarantine (a separate location on the network), but does not delete them immediately. Each day, you'll receive an e-mail digest that lists your quarantined messages, giving you a chance to review them. If they're all junk, the system will delete them for you and there's nothing else you need to do. If you see a message you want to keep, click a link next to its listing in the digest to have EDS release it from quarantine and send it to you. WebMail users will need to log into the EDS system if they want to release any quarantined messages.

Although the EDS system also allows you to manage quarantined messages, you'll be able to handle this task more quickly and easily by using the daily digest. Most of the time, you should only need to log into the EDS system if you're using WebMail, if you're traveling, or if you want to opt out of (or back into) EDS mail filtering.

To learn more about how the EDS works, visit <www.it.northwestern.edu/security/eds/> for a comprehensive overview and step-by-step instructions.

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