Spam
Aim: This page explains about SPAM and what you as the user can do about it.
Target audience: Anyone at Nikhef working with email.
What is SPAM?
Everyone with an email address has received spam at some point. Spam is any unwanted or irrelevant message, often sent in large numbers, to people who didn’t ask for it. We see it in emails, text messages, or social media, and it usually tries to sell something, trick you, or spread harmful content. It’s hard to stop spam because spammers are constantly finding new ways to send their messages. They change their email addresses, create fake accounts, or send messages from many places at once. Even when systems block spam, spammers adapt and try new methods to get around the filters. Plus, the internet is huge, and it’s hard to track down and stop every spammer. It’s like a game of cat and mouse that never really ends.
On this page, you will find information, practical tips and tricks to help you recognize, prevent, and deal with spam. Learn how to protect your inbox, safeguard your personal information, and reduce unwanted messages for a smoother online experience.
Warning
Remember that falling into spam or scams happens to many people, and it's nothing to be ashamed of. Scammers are skilled at exploiting trust and emotions. What matters is recognizing the situation, taking steps to secure your accounts and learning from the experience.
Do we have a spam filter?
We have an external party—SURFmailfilter—who provides spam and other mail filtering. You can find a lot of information about what they do and how it works on their SURF Wiki (in Dutch).
What to do with SPAM-tagged mails?
The SURFmailfilter takes a decision to tag a mail as SPAM or not. You can decide what to do with SPAM-tagged mails: nothing, store in folder or throw away. You can find more about this further below.
Can I configure block and allow lists for incoming mail to my account?
No; we have an external party for that. You can, however, create your own filters as listed above.
Does Nikhef filter my mail sent to the outside world?
Yes it does to block unwanted malicious mail from your account to destinations outside Nikhef. Have a look for more details.
How to define mail delivery filter rules?
| Instructions | Images |
|---|---|
| Login to the Webmail client: https://webmail.nikhef.nl/ | |
| Select Preferences and select Mail |  |
| In Mail select Filters |  |
| Scroll down and choose 'Create a new filter'. |  |
| Filter examples: Do nothing: easy, mails labelled with SPAM in the header will be stored in your Inbox folder. | |
| Store in a folder: create a mail-filter rule which delivers emails labelled with SPAM in the header into a spam folder. |  |
| Throw away: create a mail-filter rule which delivers emails labelled with SPAM in the header into the special folder /dev/null. | |
| Save the settings by clicking on the green circle with the white disk icon at the top right. |  |
Warning
Be aware of the sequence of the rules in the folder. For instance do not put your spam filtering rule at the end of the list.
How do you stay reasonably safe?
The Nikhef Intranet has a page with many tips to help you stay relatively safe on the Internet: https://intranet.nikhef.nl/prevent-cyberattacks-how-you-can-help-by-working-safely/
Test your own awareness!
There are several websites where you can test your own awareness to recognize SPAM and/or Phishing. Below you will find a few links that we recommend trying!
https://phishingquiz.withgoogle.com/ https://www.phishmeifyoucan.com/ https://www.opendns.com/phishing-quiz/