From Wikipedia: "E-mail spam, also known as unsolicited bulk email (UBE) or unsolicited commercial email (UCE), is the practice of sending unwanted e-mail messages, frequently with commercial content, in large quantities to an indiscriminate set of recipients." At Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School, we using one of the most widely regarded spam-filtering software solutions, SpamAssassin.
With our server, SpamAssassin filters every incoming email, and looks for suspected spam. But we have left the decision of what to do with that spam up to the individual user. We do not automatically block, delete, remove, any of your incoming email, even if it appears to be unsolicited email. When SpamAssassin examines the email, it then assigns a score to the email. The higher the number, the more likely it is spam. All email that receives a score higher then a given value will have the subject line altered to include the word "SPAM". As an additional feature to our email system, any email that receives a score higher then a given value will be "Quarantined" and never make it into your inbox. Both of these values can be set by the individual users.
Our spam filtering techniques use two special "folders". The first is the "Quarantine folder" and the other is the "Spam folder". Each folder has a different role in our filtering policies.
This is really not a standard email folder or directory. It is
more like a "holding cell" for those bad emails. Bad emails are
those that received a high spam score, were identified to contain
viruses, or identified as a phishing scheme. With
the quarantined area not being a standard folder, it will not count
against your email quota. To get to those emails that have been
marked quarantined, you click on Quarantine in the top
menu. To learn more about the Quarantine area, and how to
personalize your spam settings, please see the Quarantine Area page.
This is a standard email folder. Any email that is stored here will count against your quota. When you receive an email in your inbox that is not marked as spam, but should have been, you have the option to "report as spam". After you report an email as spam, one copy is sent to the system administrator, and then your copy is moved from its current location into the Spam folder. Since a copy is sent to the system administrator, there is no need keep email in this folder. It is like your Trash folder, and should be emptied periodically. Also like your Trash folder, any messages stored here longer then 30 days will be automatically deleted. To learn more about the Spam Folder, please see the Spam Folder page.