Waypoint Spam Filtering
Overview
WebMail Basics
Spam Mail
Managing Your Settings
Preferences
Spam Filtering Level
Reports
Headers
Subject Rewrite
Rule Management
Adding and Deleting Rules
Everyone who has had an email address knows how difficult dealing with junk email or “spam” can be. Current industry estimates show that spam mail can account for up to 60% of the email an Internet provider receives. Over the years, the people who send this junk mail have altered the way they send their messages and how those messages appear in an effort to prevent these messages from being blocked. To cope with this ever-changing menace, Waypoint has developed a comprehensive email management system that leaves you, the customer, in charge of your inbox.
When your email arrives here at Waypoint, a spam filter automatically examines it. This filter looks at the message, and assigns a point value to it based on various traits and keywords which are common to spam. If the assigned score exceeds the maximum allowed value, it is routed to your "Spam Mail" inbox. Otherwise the message is routed into your normal email inbox.
Messages routed to your "Spam Mail" inbox will be held there for seven days. This will give you an opportunity to login and view the spam mail that has been filtered. If a message was filtered that comes from a legitimate sender from whom you know you want to receive email from in the future (this is known as a "false positive"), you have the opportunity to "whitelist" the sender's address. When a user that is on your whitelist sends you email, the spam filters subtract 100 points from the message’s “spam score”, in order to allow it through.
Generally, our spam filtering software is very precise at identifying junk mail messages. When Waypoint receives tens of thousands of emails a day however, it is probable that any filtering software will misidentify messages. This is called a “false positive” when legitimate messages are tagged as spam, and a “false negative” when spam slips through without being tagged. The goal is to use a filtering level which is aggressive enough to prevent false negatives, without generating false positives. Since most people receive legitimate email from the same sources (mailing lists, friends, and family) then the use of a whitelist can be very helpful in preventing false positives.
Figure 1 shows three items. The first is titled “Mail”. This is your standard email inbox, and shows the mail you have not yet downloaded with your email program. WebMail works much like any other email software, allowing you to read new messages as well as reply, forward, delete, and compose new mail. You can also download attachments through WebMail and store them on your computer for later use.
The second choice is “Spam Mail”. This contains all mail that has been tagged as spam (it will not be downloaded into your mail client program).
The third choice is “SpamAssassin”. This is where you can build your whitelist of addresses that will never have their messages identified as spam. You can also change the aggressiveness of your mail filtering here, as well as toggle some options that advanced users may find helpful in dealing with spam messages.
The spam mail box works just like our standard WebMail. You can select any message by clicking on either the sender or the subject line. This will bring up the message in its entirety. If this message was a false positive, you have an option in the upper right hand corner to “whitelist” it.
This will add the sender of the message to your whitelist, preventing their messages from being blocked as spam.
Waypoint’s spam filtering is highly configurable, and with a little work can easily be setup to suit your tastes. To begin setting up your personal filtering preferences, click “SpamAssassin” once you’ve logged into WebMail.
Remember: After making any change to your preferences, you need to click the “Apply” button for the change to take effect.
Use the Spam Filtering Level to adjust how low of a threshold is required for your message to be marked as spam. Values to the left result in higher sensitivity, meaning messages must have more characteristics that are common to spam, which will require a higher point value. Conversely, values to the right result in lower sensitivity, meaning messages will require a lower point value. In terms of the numeric point value that gets assigned to each message, all the way to the left is 10, while all the way to the right is 1. Generally, the lower the filter sensitivity, the more messages that will be filtered and so the more “false positives” you will see. If you lower your filter sensitivity, it is recommended that you check your spam mail more often to insure that legitimate messages are not being filtered.
Each message that’s tagged as spam includes a report. This report contains information about the tests used to determine that the message was spam, and the point value that each individual test adds (or subtracts) from the message. The “Reports” section determines how this report is included in messages that get filtered as spam. Selecting “Include report as attachment” will cause the spam report to be shown at the top of each message in your spam mailbox. Selecting “Put report into message headers” will cause the report to encapsulated in the message’s headers, leaving the original message intact.
Headers top
Modifying message headers is an option that will probably only be useful to
more advanced users. Nothing in this section should need to be modified for
day-to-day use.
Selecting “Add headers to non-spam messages” will also mark the tests and score used to determine that a message was not spam. This can be useful if you are trying to determine the appropriate filtering level for the mail you receive. Remember that toggling this setting will cause you to see the filtering information in your regular email – that information will always be present in your spam email.
“Allow Multiple Lines In Headers” simply determines
whether or not information added to message headers is all compressed
into one non breaking line, or spans multiple lines. Toggling this on
will improve readability of your message headers.
Selecting “Use Spam Level Header” causes the addition of an “X-Spam-Status”
line to your message header. It will use to the keyboard character in “Spam
Level Character” to represent the point score of the spam you receive. For
example, with this setting toggled and your spam level character set to “*”,
a spam message that scores 6 points will have a header added that reads “X-Spam-Level:
*******”.
Subject rewrite top
“Subject rewrite”is just what the name implies. With “Tag Subject Lines” toggled
it will add the value in “Subject Tag” to the beginning of the subject line of each email. For example
if you have “*SPAM*” in the “Subject Tag” section, a spam message that came in
with a subject line of “Try our new product” will become “*SPAM* Try our new
product”.
The Rule Management section is the core of your ability
to control who’s messages get tagged as spam and who’s don’t. You can
add and delete rules for both whitelisting (never tagging as spam) and
blacklisting (always tagging as spam). Generally, blacklisting is only
useful if you receive spam messages from the same email address that
consistently do not get caught by the filtering software.
Adding and Deleting rules top
Adding rules is fairly straightforward. Simply
select the desired action in the drop down box (“Accept Mail From” or
“Reject Mail From”), add the address you would like the rule to use for
the desired action, and click the “Add Rule” button. For example, selecting
“Accept Mail From” and typing in “support@waypoint.com”
will cause messages from Waypoint Technical Support to never be tagged
as spam.
When adding addresses for rules to apply to, you can also use wildcards. Wildcards are represented by the “*” character, and can be thought of as “anything” or “anyone”. If you had typed in “*@waypoint.com” in the example above, that would mean that mail sent from any email address at waypoint.com would not be tagged as spam. Wildcards should be used with caution, as just using a “*” means that the desired action will be applied to all email addresses.
To remove a rule, simply find it in the list and click the “Delete Rule” button to the right.