We recently deployed a spam filtering utility, called SpamAssassin. It works by analyzing incoming email and assigning points for things it believes are signs of spam, i.e. if the spam includes numerous common sales pitch phrases, or tries to sell you Viagra, or tries to sell you porn. If the email has more points than the allowed threshold, it is then flagged by inserting *****SPAM***** at the beginning of the subject of the email. This allows you to setup rules in your email client, for instance Outlook or Outlook Express, that will automatically move the probable spam to another folder. This also prevents you from missing false positives, email that was thought to be spam but really was not (remember that your mail is being scanned by a computer and computers have no where near the reasoning ability that you and I have). The default threshold is 10 points, which will flag most spam and will allow most nonspam, but an occasional spam message will get through and an occasional nonspam message will get flagged. You can adjust the threshold, whitelist/blacklist addresses, and modify a few other options from Spamassassin User Configuration. The login is your username, not your email address, and the password is the corresponding password.

Averages(daily)

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The best way to maximize your use of this spam filtering is to setup rules to move messages marked with *****SPAM***** to a separate folder. This website has detailed instrustions on how to set this up for different email programs. NOTE: the instructions on that website use [SPAM] instead of *****SPAM***** to indicate if a message is likely spam; be sure to use *****SPAM*****.