Understanding spam and junk mail

In today's digital age, email remains an essential tool for communication. But, with the convenience of email comes the nuisance of spam and junk mail. Understanding how to manage these unwanted messages can help keep your inbox clean and ensure you don't miss important emails. 

Managing spam and junk email  

Spam refers to unsolicited and often irrelevant messages sent over the internet, typically to a large number of users, for the purposes of advertising, phishing, spreading malware, etc. Junk email, on the other hand, is a broader category that includes spam but also encompasses other unwanted messages that may not necessarily be harmful, but are still not useful to the recipient. 

At Oxford, all emails arriving in the Nexus365 system are checked by filters which automatically send spam messages to your junk email folder. Sometimes, internal emails from Oxford may also end up in your junk folder. This can happen if the sender uses a third-party mail system such as Mailchimp.  

You can easily review your junk email folder to check for legitimate messages and mark them as ’not junk' – this adds the sender to your ‘safe senders’ list so that next time their email stays in your inbox.  

Email quarantine 

If the spam filters perceive an incoming email to be a greater threat it might be sent to your Nexus365 email quarantine to keep it safely away from university systems and services. On rare occasions, legitimate emails can be filtered to quarantine, so if you are expecting an email and can’t find it in your junk email folder, check your email quarantine.  

Take control of your inbox and ensure that important messages are not missed. Guidance for managing junk email and releasing messages from quarantine can be found on the IT Help website.  

If you still can’t locate your missing message, you can report it via IT Self Service. 

Top tip!

Regularly review your junk email folder!