As part of the Anti-Spam system at the University of Reading, IT Services subscribe to a two blocklists, that are used to reduce the amount of Spam received. They do this by rejecting email that has come from an email server that has been reported as sending Spam and this significantly reduces the amount of Spam email that we are required to process.

Generally this process works well, but increasingly IT Services have been receiving reports that external email senders have been blocked and that the sending email service is not taking the appropriate action to remove themselves from the list. This has the result that genuine email does not get through. Given the increasing number of reports and the continued inaction of the Internet and Email Service Providers, IT Services have decided to no longer reject email on the basis of one of these blocklists. Instead should the email service provider show up on the blocklist, it will increase the likelihood of email it sends as being classed as Spam.

IT Services recommend that you check your AutoSpam folders at https://www.autospam.reading.ac.uk on a regular basis to check whether a false positive result has put legitimate email in this folder. You should receive a digest from this service on a regular basis, from ‘its-automated-email@reading.ac.uk’ with the subject of ‘<username> AutoSpam Deliveries <date>’ You can also ‘whitelist’ safe senders at https://www.mailopts.reading.ac.uk

The management of email security is is an on-going process and we will continue to develop the system as required to ensure that we accept all genuine email while providing an efficient and effective anti-spam service.

If you have any feedback, then please contact IT Services via its-help@reading.ac.uk

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