Spam Filter issue

Jane Linder

As of approximately 2 am on Sunday, February 12, 2023, an issue with the spam filter resulted in all submitted applications receiving fraud status = 3 (likely fraud). The spam filter team is researching the issue and expects a fix today.

Additional information will be posted here throughout the day.

Jane Linder

The error was fixed mid-morning, and all the apps with a false positive are being reprocessed and released from the spam filter if they are not fraudulent.

severa

Hi Jane, do you have a timeline for when the reprocessing steps will happen?

thanks,

Mike

Jane Linder

The reprocessing was completed late last night, and our support staff is now bulk-releasing all the applications that are flagged as not fraudulent. This process will take about an hour to get through all the apps.

maquino

@Jane Linder - if these applications were never downloaded to our CCCApply Super Glue staging table, will this bulk-releasing bring these records over?

Jane Linder

@maquino Yes, you should have all the applications delivered to your staging table now.

maquino

@Jane Linder - thank you so much.

severa

Hi Jane, is the report center data reliable at this point? It looks like still about 40% of our Sunday apps are still flagged as fraud. And less than 5% are status 4.

Jane Linder

Hi Michael,

The network services team is working to update historical data, most likely today. Our primary focus was to get the pending apps released to colleges, so now that this is done, we are shifting to an update of the historical data. I'll post an update here when that is done.

Jane Linder

The network services team is working to update historical data in the CCCApply Report Center with correct fraud status values. This work is expected to complete today. I'll post an update here when that work is completed.

Jane Linder

The script to correct historical fraud values in the submitted apps table continues to be tested today before deployment to Production. Once testing of the script is successful we will proceed with correcting the fraud status for all affected applications. I will post an update mid-day on our progress.

Jane Linder

Another outcome of the spam filter errors over the weekend was that many student accounts were incorrectly disabled. All affected accounts were re-enabled as of Tuesday evening, and students who called our support team before Tuesday were immediately re-enabled by Support staff.

severa

Thanks Jane, this is good to know. Sometimes we get contacted by students for cccapply issues and vice versa.

Also about the historical data. The apps i saw in the report center were still not in our system, but i checked earlier in the day so maybe it was in process..

thanks,

Mike

severa

Hi again, this actually brings up an important question. What triggers a disabling of the account? Is it the status set to 3, meaning if colleges leave apps in that state they are prohibiting students from applying in the future? (even to other colleges?) Does this expire, or are college staff effectively in control of the account validity in this way?

thanks,

MIke

Jane Linder

Hey Mike, I will email you directly on this one as I don't like to get into details on the spam filter processes in a public forum. Will reach out now.

severa

Makes sense. sorry about that.

thanks,

Mike

Jane Linder

Historical application data has now been updated with correct fraud data.