This list of Frequently Asked Questions is provided to help you
understand the Mail Scanning Service.
Will spam be deleted before I retrieve my email?
No email is deleted from your mailbox, unless you configure it to
do so through the MailScanner
Configuration Panel. Any email reported by the system as spam
will have the subject line modified and header records added
(tagged) to indicate them so that you can automatically filter
them from your inbox and place them in a separate folder so that
you can check them at a later time. You can configure MailScanner
to delete email marked as Spam and/or Definitely Spam for you, but
beware of the issues in the following answers to spam related
questions.
Should I tell you about incorrectly tagged spam?
Not unless it is an email from someone you regularly receive email
from. The simplest thing to do would be to add them to your
whitelist in the MailScanner
Configuration Panel.
Will all spam be detected?
No. All the email is scanned and assigned a score based on the
likelihood that an email is spam. Thresholds (low scoring and high
scoring spam) are used to determine whether an email should be
tagged as spam: it is important that this is done to help avoid
false-positives and false-negatives.
Is all email tagged as spam, spam?
Not necessarily. The system is not foolproof and there will be
instances where legitimate email is tagged as spam and where spam
is not tagged as such. This is why all email is delivered by
default, so you can filter them email in your email client and
check through the spam to ensure there is no email that you
actually need.
I don't need (spam/virus) checking, can I only have
email scanned for one?
Yes, you can configure the service to either scan for viruses,
spam or both.
Will viruses be deleted before I retrieve my email?
Yes, if you set Virus Scanning to yes in the MailScanner
Front-end. All emails and file attachments will be scanned for
viruses. If one is found, the virus is removed from the email
before it is delivered to your mailbox, a text file attachment
will be added to the email notifying you of the virus infection.
Removed viruses and dangerous file attachments removed from email
may be stored in a quarantine area on the server for 30 days. You
can request the file from quarantine as described in the text file
attachments, or , preferably ask the sender to resend the file in
a zip archive.
Will all viruses be detected?
No system can guarantee 100% detection, though nearly all infected
files and dangerous file attachments should be detected using this
service. The service scans all email received and sent
through the server to help ensure that you do not accidentally
start spreading a virus yourself.
Do I still need a virus scanner on my computer?
Yes! Not only can the service not guarantee that all email viruses
will be detected, there are many other ways that your computer can
become infected. You should always install an anti-virus solution
on every computer and ensure that it is constantly kept up to
date.
How do I know whether and email has a virus or is a
spam?
There are two methods used to identify these emails to you.
Firstly, the subject line of the affected email will be prefixed
with one of the following:
{Disarmed} - indicates that the email
contained html tags that are considered dangerous, e.g. iframe
and form tags
{Virus?} - indicates that the email
contained a virus and has had the attachment removed.
{Filename?} - indicates that the email
contained a dangerous file attachment
which has been removed.
{Fraud?} - indicates the e-mail may be fraudulent or
designed to collect personal information from you.
{Spam?} - indicates that the email is
likely to be spam - you should filter these emails into a
separate folder in your email client.
{Definitely Spam?} - indicates that the
email is almost definitely spam because it got a very high
detection score - you should filter these emails into a
separate folder in your email client.
Secondly, additional headers are added to the email:
X-___________-VirusCheck: Found to be clean
- indicates that the email passed the virus scanning tests.
X-___________-VirusCheck: Found to be infected
- indicates that email email contained a virus which has been
removed.
X-___________-SpamCheck: spam - indicates
that the email is likely to be spam and contains information
on how the score was reached.
X-___________-SpamScore: ssssss - indicates
the spam score for the email. Each s represents 1 point, so
sssss indicates a score of 5. The service has a default
threshold of 5 for {Spam?} and 20 for {Definitely Spam?}
Can the system simply delete all email marked as spam?
We advise against this as it is possible that legitimate email
will be deleted and the sender will never know that you didn't
receive it. We recommend filtering
the email in your email client and placing it in a separate folder
so that you can check through it in your own time.
If you're happy that email marked as {Spam?}, and/or more suitably
{Definitely Spam?} you can then configure MailScanner to delete
that email.
Another alternative is to have all email marked as {Spam?}, and/or
more suitably {Definitely Spam?} delivered to a specific email
address. For example, spam@mydomain.com.
How do I configure my email software to filter spam into
a separate folder?
You should create a separate folder in your email client called
Spam. You should then create an inbox
rule to place any email containing the strings {Spam?} or
{Definitely Spam?} into that folder.