# About Proofpoint

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What is the Proofpoint spam management system and why do we use it? The Proofpoint spam management system is an  
email filtering tool. To protect A-State from virus attacks and to protect you from receiving hundreds of spam messages, all  
incoming email is filtered by Proofpoint, which is an anti-spam and anti-virus product.

<p class="callout info">How does email filtering work? All incoming email is filtered by a server. Messages that contain a virus, or spam, or  
inappropriate content can either be deleted or "scored." In the case of spam, the message score indicates the probability that the message is spam --- so a message scoring 100 would have 100% chance of being spam (definite spam) and a message scoring 0 would have 0% chance of being spam (legitimate correspondence). Messages scoring high enough to probably be spam are quarantined, and messages scoring below 50 are sent directly to your inbox.</p>