Email Online Protection - Quarantine

Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is Microsoft’s anti-spam solution that protects Hood’s O365 and on-premise mailboxes. EOP helps protect Hood’s inbound and outbound e-mail from spam, viruses, and phishing scams. This service replaces Hood’s previously used Barracuda Spam Appliances. 

All Hood Faculty, Staff and Students will be able to:

• access and manage their spam quarantine settings
• receive a daily quarantine message when their account has quarantined mail
• choose to delete or deliver quarantined messages

Logon IDs and Passwords

Since EOP is part of Microsoft’s Office 365 program, all users will be required to use their O365 credentials. In all cases, this is your Hood email address and password.

Spam Notification Messages/Releasing Quarantined Messages

Every day at approximately 8:00p EST you will receive a notification message that lists e-mail flagged as spam quarantine. The message will include the number of spam quarantined messages, the date and time of the last message in the list, and the sender, subject, date and size of each included message. Each message will have an option to send the message to your inbox or report the message as not junk: 

• By choosing “Release to Inbox” will send the message to your inbox
• By choosing “Report as Not Junk” will report the message as not junk to Microsoft for review and will send a copy of the message to your inbox.

Important Note: Messages cannot be deleted from EOP.  If a message remains in Quarantine for 14 days, the message is assumed to be spam and will be permanently deleted. These messages cannot be retrieved.

Important Notes

• Always remember to logout of your O365 pages
• For support contact the Hood IT Helpdesk (301-696-3925 or helpdesk@hood.edu)

How to Manage Your EOP Settings

End users can add specific users or domains to a safe sender and recipients or a blocked sender list by configuring your junk email settings in Microsoft OWA or Outlook client. Note: messages that are sent from blocked senders are marked as spam, not rejected, meaning that they can be retrieved from the Junk Email folder or quarantine.

Outlook Web Access (OWA)

To manage junk email settings within OWA, select Settings > Options, and then select one of the following:

• Block or allow
• Mail > Accounts > Block or Allow

Under Block or Allow, you have the choice of letting Microsoft’s rules filter your mail or you can establish your own rules to filter your mail.

If you choose to create your own rules, you can establish a Safe Senders and Recipients or a Block Senders list. Each will allow you to enter a complete email address or a domain address (ie: domainname.com). For further information, please check Microsoft’s page on Block and Allow (Junk Mail Settings).

Outlook Client

Outlook 2013/2010 has individual settings you can configure for junk email filtering. If you find that not enough or too many messages are being sent to your Junk E-mail folder, you can easily adjust these settings to instantly resolve any filtering issues.

NOTE: O365 users that use the Outlook client can use their O365 OWA to block or allow messages. Please refer to the “Outlook Web Access” section above.

Viewing and Deleting Junk Messages

The Junk E-mail folder is in the left-most column under your list of all mail folders. If you have any junk messages, this folder will show a number in brackets to its right indicating the total number of messages. Simply click on the Junk E-mail folder to view these messages.

• To permanently delete a message you are viewing, click on the Delete icon in the upper left of the Outlook Home tab.
• To delete all messages in your Junk E-mail folder, right-click on the folder and select Empty Folder from the menu that appears.

Setting Junk E-mail Options

1. While viewing your Outlook Mail, make sure the Home tab is selected. Click on the Junk icon to the upper left. The first options in the Junk drop down menu reference the specific message that is selected in your main Outlook window. For quick Junk filtering, select any of the following:

• Block Sender - automatically put any email from the sender's address into your Junk E-mail folder.
• Never Block Sender - messages where the sender's email address is in the From field will never be identified as Junk E-mail.
• Never Block Sender's Domain (@example.com) - any messages from that same domain (typically an organization or company such as @nyc.gov, @staples.com, @harvard.edu), will not be filtered as Junk E-mail.
• Never Block this Group or Mailing List - messages that use a distribution list may have the email address in the To, Cc or Bcc fields of the email you receive. In this case you would add them to the Safe Recipients List to ensure that messages aren't filtered as junk mail.

2. To configure global filtering, select Junk E-Mail Options... from the bottom of the Junk drop down menu. Make sure the Options tab is selected in the window that appears. If you are finding that too many messages are filtered as junk, select the top option of No Automatic Filtering.

• If you find that you are receiving a lot of junk mail in your Inbox, you may want to select Low or High in the Junk E-mail Options window instead - however you will have to check your Junk E-Mail folder regularly to make sure messages you do want are received.
• The Safe Senders, Safe Recipients and Blocked Senders tabs at the top of the Junk E-Mail Options window allow you to view and manage any addresses that have been added to these lists for filtering.

When done making any changes, select the Apply button in the lower right to save them, then click OK to return to Outlook.