Email Filtering at Binghamton University

Viruses, worms and spam (unsolicited commercial email) have become increasingly prevalent in electronic mail sent to the University community, some of it capable of causing damage to our infrastructure and resulting in costly downtime. In order to protect the integrity of campus computing, Information Technology Services filters incoming e-mail. All mail sent to binghamton.edu email addresses (inbound mail) is scanned and checked for e-mail borne viruses and spam. The spam filter, based on a conservative “blacklist” of known spammers, has proven successful in discarding some 55,000 unsolicited commercial e-mails each day. Since this list generally contains only the most egregious unsolicited commercial e-mail senders, some spam will make it through.

All incoming mail is scanned for viruses at the server level using McAfee anti-virus software and definition files. (McAfee for your desktop is available free from Information Technology Services at http://its.binghamton.edu/software/anti-virus)

1. Clean mail is passed through.
2. Infected mail is disinfected, if possible. Disinfected mail is then passed through.
3. Infected mail that can’t be disinfected is quarantined.

All attachments to incoming mail are also screened for file extensions that are indicative of viruses and other dangerous material:

• If the extension is .zip, .exe, .com, .scr, .bat, .cpl or .pif the attachment is stripped from the message and a substitute message announcing the removal is attached.
• If the extension has multiple types - any one of which is deemed dangerous [e.g., .exe.doc] the attachment is stripped and a substitute message announcing the removal is attached.

NOTE: The content of messages is not scanned. Many commercial and free software products such as Mailwasher (http://www.mailwasher.net) are available that attempt to filter unsolicited commercial email to some extent on your computer, but the efficacy of these solutions has not been adequately demonstrated.