Anti Spam

Spam is a big problem in the world of email and many of us are bombarded with it on a daily basis.

At JISCMail we take spam very seriously, and together with group owners, we can provide very effective screening against it:

• The first level of protection comes into effect before email even reaches JISCMail. A separate server checks senders addresses against black-lists maintained by reputable anti-spam organisations.
• The second level of protection is LISTSERV®, the mailing list software that powers JISCMail. While the exact workings of LISTSERV's anti-spam mechanisms are not published, to avoid being caught out by them, you should not cross-post. ie: do not post the same message to more than one group at the same time. If you need to post to more than one group, contact the Helpline for details of what options are available to you.
• The third level of protection is the list configuration, which is under the control of the group owner. Various settings can affect how secure a group and its subscribers are from spam. See group Security below for details.

If you would like to report a possible case of spam, please contact the Helpline.

Group Security

As a group owner, you can change the configuration of your group at any time and entirely at your discretion. However, some of these changes can have security implications for the group and its subscribers which you should be aware of. The main points to note are:

Send= A 'Public' group allows anyone to post, regardless of whether they are a member or not. However, by default, the 'Send' option will be set as 'Send= Public,Confirm,Non-Member' which forces non-members to confirm that their address is valid and avoids spamming attempts from automated systems.

Review= This is the option that determines who may view subscriber's email address details. JISCMail recommends that this is set to 'Private' so that only subscribers to the group can access details of other subscribers. Alternatively, it may be set to 'Owner/s' if details should be kept more confidential.

Subscription= JISCMail recommends a minimum setting of 'Open,Confirm' for this option. This means that when someone subscribes to a group, Listserv sends out an 'OK confirmation' email that they must respond to before their subscription is accepted. This avoids the problem of automated spamming mechanisms joining the group. For greater security, you can choose the have all subscription requests sent to an owner for approval by setting this to 'By_Owner,Confirm'. Some groups may also specify 'Closed' if they do not wish to accept new members.

Notebook= This is the line that controls who may access your group archives. When set to 'Public' , anyone, regardless of whether they are subscribed to the group or not, can view the message archives and the email addresses contained there. If it is set to 'Private' , only the group members will be able to access the archives.

Confidential= When this is set to 'Yes', the group will not appear on the JISCMail A-Z or Category Pages and will therefore not be visible to potential new members.