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Does SPAM have you in a jam? What is Spam? Spam is unsolicited advertising Email soliciting a myriad of products, most commonly pornography, questionable health products, and get rich quick scams. Current research estimates that 85% of all Email is Spam. What can be done to stop receiving it? In order to limit the volume of spam delivered to NJCU e-mail accounts, Information Technology has implemented anti-spam software on the e-mail server. This software, called PreciseMail Anti-Spam (PMAS) Gateway traps spam, phishing and virus threats as mail passes through the university mail server. PMAS has a proven out-of-the-box spam detection accuracy rate of 98%. Each mailbox owner can decide how aggressively to filter for spam, and what senders to always allow or block. How do I sign up? Use of this software is optional. A link to this service is provided on the WebMail login page. Login using your NJCU Email account name and password. On the PMAS Main page, click the "Set Your Preferences" link. On the Preferences page, click the "Opt-in" radio button to enable the scanning your messages. Then click on "Update Basic Preferences" on the bottom of the page. What do I do now? Once you have enabled PMAS, all your mail will be scanned as it is received by the Email server before delivery to you. However, spammers take great effort to design spam that looks like legitimate mail, to fool both software filters and recipients. PMAS is equally aggressive in filtering out the junk, but in doing so, some legitimate mail will also be quarantined in the process. You should review your quarantined messages for mis-directed Emails at least once a week. If you get a lot of Email, check more often. Also, if you are expecting an important Email that "should have already arrived in your Inbox", check the PMAS quarantine queue. How do I check the Quarantined Queue? Go to https://mail.NJCU.edu/, log in, click "View Quarantined Messages", and scan the subjects. Click the checkbox next to each legitimate message, then click on "Release" to let it go through to your mailbox. When released, the system will also prompt you to add the sender's e-mail address or the sender's domain to your Allow List. If you want all messages from this specific user to go through, click on the checkbox next to the address and then on "Add Checked Items to the Allow List". Do NOT use the "Allow domain" check box. NOTE: Messages from listserv lists and electronic Newsletters should not be added to your Allow List this way. These messages should be added manually, replacing the name portion of the e-mail address with wildcard notation. See examples of wild card usage on the "Allow Entries" page. Twice daily, PMAS checks the quarantine area of every user for new messages, and sends notifications to all the users who have new quarantined mail, as a gentle reminder to check your quarantine area. After you've gotten into the habit of checking your quarantine area, you can turn off these notices on the PMAS Preferences page. For security purposes, please be sure to log-out of PMAS before you close the browser or before moving on to another website. For assistance using PMAS, send helpdesk@njcu.edu. Department of Information Technology |