Email SPAM Help

Who should read this?
If you have an OPWest.org email account, then this help page applies to you.

Who should NOT read this?
If you use yahoo, gmail, hotmail, or any other email service this help page is not for you.  How can you tell if you are using one of these services?  Just look at your email address and if after the @ sign it does not say "opwest.org" then you can stop reading this help page, because you are not using an opwest.org email account.

SpamAssassin
OPWest email services use SpamAssassin to detect and irradicate spam in your email account.  The detection of spam is not an exact science and it is more like a game between those who want to spam and those who want to stop them.  Spammers issue new and creative spam messages daily, and antispam tools try to detect and learn how to destroy them.

Here's how it works.  SpamAssassin looks at an email and scores it with a spam score.  A valid email will have a very low score, of say 1-5, while a potential spam will have a score of 6+.  It is not uncommon that a blatant spam will have score of 20+.  Why do I phrase it as potential?  Because, sometimes a valid email will look just like spam, but it really isn't.  We call this a false positive.

False positives
When an email is marked as a false positive it gets treated like any other spam.  It gets deleted.  Currently any email score of 5 on the spam rating will get deleted.  If you are repeatedly not getting email from a particular person, because they are registering too many false positives in your email account, this is what you can do:

1. If using an email client (Outlook, Eudora, Netscape Mail, etc.)
   Look in your spam/junk folder of your email client and see if it is getting thrown in there.  It may not be OPWest that is tagging it for spam/junk.  The email could be making it to your computer, only to be handled as spam when it has already gotten to you.  This is the most common reason someone does not get their email.
    
2. If using an email client make sure in your preference/tools/etc. that you or your email client has not flagged the sender as bad.  Sometimes there is a "black list", "spam list", etc. that will not allow any emails form a particular sender.
    
3. If you are NOT using a client and connecting through the OPWest website, or have tried the above then send an email to the webmaster@opwest.org stating one of the following:
    
   1. I want my spam ranking higher and I understand that more spam will appear in my inbox.  This is a tradeoff because I really want to see my spam messages that may include false positives, or;
       
   2. I will supply in my email to the webmaster the name of the sender that keeps registering false positives and the webmaster will "White List" that sender to allow all emails through.  I understand that viruses from this sender could potentially get through to me.

If you have further questions, please contact the webmaster.