Quarantine.anu.edu.au

The Division of Information's Quarantine service

DOI's e-mail Quarantine service is a system which protects you from receiving large amounts of unsolicited ‘spam’ e-mail which may contain offensive or harmful content, while ensuring that you still receive your ‘legitimate’ e-mails.

How does it work?

The Quarantine system scans all incoming e-mail and assigns a ‘score’ to each message. Spam messages almost always contain certain tell-tale characteristics which legitimate messages do not, such as certain content in the subject line, keywords, certain kinds of attachments, and so on. Each suspicious characteristic is assigned a certain amount of points. When the Quarantine system filter detects that a message has a 50% or greater likelihood of containing spam, the message is prevented from reaching your inbox.

Where do quarantined messages go?

You will not see any quarantined messages in any of the folders on your e-mail client. They are sent to a special folder which can only be accessed by logging into the Quarantine system.

Why would you need to log into the quarantine system?

It is important to note that most ANU users will never need to log into the Quarantine system, as spam e-mail, by it’s very nature, is something you never need to read. The ANU’s Quarantine system is designed to deliver all legitimate e-mails to the user. It is much more likely that an occasional spam message will reach your inbox than a legitimate message will be diverted into the Quarantine system.

In some circumstances however, you may want to check what kind of messages have been quarantined. For example, if you are concerned that you have not received an e-mail which you should have received, you may want to make sure it has not been mistakenly captured as a spam e-mail.

Logging into the Quarantine system

Simply visit quarantine.anu.edu.au and enter your ANU username & password at the following prompt.

Once logged in, you will see the following screen:

You can sort the messages according to your preference by clicking on the header of each column.

The left-hand side menu has the following choices:

Blocked messages: this is the default screen (as pictured above) that you will see when you first log in as pictured above. It is simply the messages that have been blocked by the quarantine system from entering your inbox.

Normally all you would see on this screen will be spam e-mails with their spam ‘score’ in the leftmost column. If, however, you spot a legitimate e-mail in this folder, simple clicks the white box to the left of the message, then click on one of two buttons:

-         The deliver message button: This will deliver the message to the inbox of your regular e-mail client.

-         The deliver & approve sender button: This will have the same effect as deliver message, but will also ensure that all future e-mails from that sender are ‘protected’ from being captured by the Quarantine system.

Further info on protecting legitimate senders from the Quarantine system can be seen in the approved senders section below...

Deleted messages: This looks similar to the Blocked Messages image as seen above. If you have opted to delete any messages in your Blocked Messages folder, they will appear here.

However, there is no actual need to do delete messages from your Blocked Messages folder, as the Quarantine system automatically deletes blocked messages after 14 days.

Approved senders: This is where you can ‘approve’ particular e-mail addresses, which will protect them from ever being captured by the Quarantine system. A list of approved e-mail addresses is known as a “whitelist”.

As you can see in the picture, there are various options for approving e-mail addresses:

-         specifying a particular e-mail address (eg. Joe.bloggs@anu.edu.au)

-         specifying a whole domain (@anu.edu.au) by using the “*” wildcards where a person’s name would be, ie. “*.*@anu.edu.au”.

You should never use the “entire domain” option. Spammers will often create a phoney domain address, ie. Joe.Spammer@anu.edu.au, and enacting the “entire domain” option would allow all of their spam to bypass the Quarantine system and flood your inbox.

Blocked senders: Known as a “blacklist”, this is the reverse of Approved Senders and will look similar. It allows you to permanently block a particular sender or domain.

As with the Approved Senders option, you will probably never need to block particular senders and care should be taken when doing so, especially the “entire domain” option. Many problematic ‘spam domains’ have already been blocked from reaching the ANU e-mail system, and the Quarantine system effectively deals with the remaining individual spam messages.

It is also important to note that spammers often fake their e-mail address, so blocking a particular sender may have little effect, as spammer will simply use a different e-mail address for each message.

Options: This allows you to set three options:

-         Notification of blocked messages: If activated, this option will result in the Quarantine system sending you a periodical “digest” e-mail. These digests display the Quarantine message ID number, the spam probability percentage, the message's "From" address, and the message's "Subject". To release a single message from the Quarantine, click on the ID number. This generates an email to the Quarantine server, and the message is automatically delivered to your inbox. To release all listed messages from the Quarantine, reply to the message. As a default this option is inactive.

-         Hold messages: Allows you to change the length of the period blocked messages will be kept before being Automatically erased. The default length of time in 14 days. This feature is useful if you are going on a holiday and will not be checking your e-mail for a while.

-         Language: You can choose the language displayed within the quarantine system. The default is English.

Where to go for help

If you believe you have a problem relating to your e-mail or the Quarantine system, please contact the DOI helpdesk on x59666, or via e-mail at doi.helpdesk@anu.edu.au or log a job via the Helpdesk webpage.