Spam Filtering

SmarterMail includes a variety of antispam measures that will help keep a user's inbox free of unwanted mail. In the Spam Filtering section, users can review/configure the spam filtering options and trusted senders for their account.

In most cases, a system or domain administrator has already configured the filtering options for spam messages on your domain. However, if they allow it, you can override those settings to select your own options for filtering out potentially unwanted email. NOTE: Wildcards are not supported for Blocked or Trusted senders.

Options

• Override spam settings for this account - Enable this setting to customize the way spam is handled and to override the settings created by the domain administrator. If this option is disabled, the domain's default spam filtering policy will be displayed and cannot be edited.

When you override the spam options set by your administrator, you can choose the actions that are taken when email comes in that has a low, medium, or high probability of being spam. For each spam level, choose the action you wish to have taken. If you choose to add text to the subject line of messages, type the text in the box below the action drop down.

Trusted Senders

Users can add specific email addresses (such as jsmith@example.com) or domains (such as example.com) that will be exempted from general spam filtering. This lets the system know that these messages come from a trusted source and can prevent mail from friends, business associates, and/or mailing lists from being blocked or sent to the Junk Email folder. By default, every contact in a user's Contacts list is considered a trusted sender and bypasses spam filtering. Adding domains and/or email addresses also impacts the "Verification Score" of a sender -- the shield that is displayed alongside a sender's address when viewing messages in webmail.

However, if the system administrator has enabled SPF, DKIM, and/or DMARC, (all of which are strongly recommended), SmarterMail will run those checks on ALL emails, including those from trusted senders, whitelisted IP addresses, and IP bypasses. This "trust but verify" approach is important because anyone can write any return path that they want when sending a message. Therefore, this extra layer of protection helps prevent spammers from flooding users with hundreds of messages that aren't truly from a trusted sender. If an SPF, DKIM, or DMARC check fails on an incoming message, the "trusted sender" is no longer trusted by SmarterMail, and the weights of all enabled spam checks will be applied to that message.

If the trusted sender status of an email was bypassed due to a failed SPF, DKIM, or DMARC check, the TotalSpamWeight line in the email header will specify the check(s) that failed, and why. Additional information about SPF, DKIM, and DMARC status can also be found in the header.

The Trusted Senders area has three editable areas. Users simply click the pencil icon to add the following:

• Trusted Domains - Full domain names (e.g., example.com) to add as "Trusted".
• Trusted Email Addresses - Full email addresses (e.g., jsmith@example.com) to as as "Trusted".
• Bypass Spam Filtering for Unverfied Senders - NOTE: This will only be displayed if the domain administrator has enabled the setting. Full email addresses the user wants to exempt from ALL spam checks, included SPF, DKIM, and DMARC checks.

When entering trusted senders or domains, enter only one item per line break.

Blocked Senders

Users can add specific accounts to their Blocked Senders list. For example, if you receive a message from dan@im-a-spammer.com, you can left-click on the email address in the message view and select "Block Sender" from the context menu. When you do this, that message, and any future message from that specific sender, will have whatever Action is set on the Blocked Senders card applied. This allows users to have a bit more granular control over senders that escape whatever spam filtering the system administrator has set up. NOTE: Any Action set on the Blocked Senders card are applied just for the user who sets them -- these Actions are not domain-wide or system-wide, they are only applied for the specific user who creates them.

As for the Blocked Sender Actions themselves, they include:

• None - Nothing happens to the messages from Blocked Senders.
• Move To Junk Email Folder - Messages are moved to the Junk folder, then handled however items in that folder are handled. (E.g., auto-clean rules.)
• Move To Deleted Items Folder - Messages are moved to the Deleted Items folder, then handled by whatever rules apply for that folder. (E.g., auto-clean rules.)
• Delete - The messages are flat out deleted and, therefore, unrecoverable.

Any address that has been marked for blocking will appear in the Blocked Senders list. Clicking the pencil icon allows users to review and possibly edit the list of senders they have blocked. Users can also manually enter addresses rather than simply using the context menu from their message view.