- How many users will Spam Police support?
FatPipe Spam Police has four different versions to accommodate different size user groups. The four sizes are: 1-100 users, 101-250, 251-500 and 501-2000 users. Larger user group custom versions are also available to accommodate your size network.
- We have a lot of email, can we use more than one unit to screen for spam?
The product is designed so that you may use multiple Spam Police units to handle large email load.
- How do I add a spammer's email address to the spam list if the program did not catch it?
You have two choices on adding to the spam list. You can get the spammers email address and copy and paste it into the Spammers list. Just right-click on the icon, choose Configure, and then choose Spammers and paste in the email address.
Alternatively you can let Spam Police hold all email by turning on the Score and store non-spam messages command. This can be found in the Miscellaneous tab under Configure. If a message doesn't get caught as Spam, you can go to the Spam Viewer, right-click and choose Add to Spammers.
- Add to Spammers often does not work because the FROM: email address is forged. Is there a better way?
There are lots of different ways to detect spam, and Spam Police includes the ability to recognize many of them.
Add to Spammers only deals with the From: address.
You can specify valid To: addresses in the To: analyzer and also specify how many points the message gets if it doesn't have a valid 'To:' address.
Yes, spammers' email addresses are often forged or false. You can add Wild Cards to enter in domain names. For example and asterisk (*) followed by the domain name will get rid of all emails coming from that domain name, e.g.:adding the phrase, *BADDOMAIN.COM to the Spammers list will quarentine all all messages with a From: address with that domain name, such as Joe@baddomain.com or SeeThis@host.baddomain.com.
Another way to prevent spam from getting into your email inbox is to use the BadWords tool. You can look at some of the unique words or phrases spammers use and add those to the BadWords list.
Lastly, you can review the scores that the spam messages received and consider bumping up the points for some of the analyzers to push it over the edge into the spam category.
- I made one of the messages I received early a "friend" and just saw that it was on the list of scored items with a score of -20000 and a "yellow" dot in front of the name. The message was not kept from me and I was wondering why it went to the captured page?
The spam viewer window has a legend for the colored dots. The yellow dot indicates that the message was modified in some way. The most likely reason was that an executable file was sent as an attachment or the email used HTML script. Executable files and HTML scripts are potentially dangerous so we mark them as potential spam.
NOTE: The most common virus distribution method is by storing a virus in an executable file and finding a way to disseminate the virus by usurping your friends email address (viruses typically will run through their email address boo and end the virus to every contact listed), attaching the virus via the executable file.
If you decide you want to open the executable file, then you can UnSpam the message and you get the original untouched message back.
You can decide to turn off the Executable File Removal feature in the Attachments configuration, or allow HTML Scripts to pass through by changing the setting in HTML Removal.
- Why are all my messages marked 'read' after Spam Police removes the spam from my account?
Spam Police has to read the email to determine whether it is spam. Some POP3 servers add a line Status as soon as the message is requested. For example, configure your email server filters mark the messages as UnRead when it comes in to avoid this.
NOTE: In Eudora email software, use Tools->Filters and set up a filter that makes the status Unread.
- Does Spam Police remove viruses?
Yes.
Spam Police can detect and remove viruses that are associated with an email. Spam Police cannot determine if an attached file has a virus, but it does remove executable attachments and HTML Scripts by default.
NOTE: New viruses that spread very quickly are not caught by virus checking programs because the virus ID string -- the method of identifying a file as a virus -- is not yet known.
If you are certain you want the file attachment and you are certain it is not a virus, you can UnSpam the message and get the attachment.
- Can something be done with spam that uses the wrong character set?
Yes, go to the Charset Analyzer and choose character sets and the number of points they should be assigned.
- Spam Police is showing some email that is over 30 days old, even though, I have it set to delete spam after 30 days.
Spam Police uses the date that it analyzed the message, not the date that is reported by the e- mail, which may be forged.
- What are the profanities?
We have decided not to reveal what we have listed as profanities. Suffice it to say, they are words and short phrases that appear mostly in pornographic emails.
- Can I check to see if a Profanity word is in the list?
Yes. Type in the word and hit the Check button. If it is in the list, it will tell you.
- Can I modify the Profanity Words listing?
Yes, you may add or delete words from the profanity list.
If you would like to make your own list from scratch, simply delete PROFANITY.INI from the program directory and start adding your own words.
- What do the dots mean next to the email headers?
The green dot means that the message was not determined to be spam.
The yellow dot means the message was modified before being sent to your email program
The red dot means the message was determined to be spam because the score assigned exceeded your current Spam Threshold settings.
- Why doesn't Spam Police keep track of the sort I've set?
Spam Police is designed to handle a lot of spam. To be efficient, it only loads the emails that you see in the viewer. When you sort, it has to build the entire list, which can be very slow because Spam Police compresses the spam to make the best use of your disk resources.
- How do I add an entire company to my Friends list?
Just add the domain name of the company preceded by an asterisk, e.g.: *@SOMECOMPANY.COM where SOMECOMPANY.COM is the domain of the friendly partner company
- How can I add an entire company as spammers?
Just add the domain name of the company preceded by an asterisk, e.g.: *@DOMAIN.COM where DOMAIN.COM is the company's domain.
If the company has other servers, like MAIL.ACOMPANY.COM, then you may want to add *MAIL.ACOMPANY.COM
This works well to get rid of every email address from a company that is known to send a lot of spam.
- How do I decide how to set my spam threshold scores?
Go to the Configure Menu and click on Score to set spam thresholds. The default settings will suffice for most people. However, if you find it is catching too many of your good messages as spam, then increase the score a bit.
If you find that it is not catching enough spam, then you may want to decrease the number, although you may find that Spam Police will also catch some of your good messages as spam.
You can also turn on 'Score and store non-spam messages' and it will give you reports for ALL your messages. You can sort by score and then look at where the best threshold setting would fall.
- My email address is XYZ@SOMECOMPANY.COM, but I also handle SALES@SOMECOMPANY.COM and INFO@SOMECOMPANY.COM. How should I configure Spam Police?
Go to the Configure menu and then click on the To. You can add your other alias email addresses there.
- What are Good Words for?
You should add your interests (business and personal) to the Good Words list. Then when an email comes in, if it has your interest in it, Spam Police will deduct X number of points which increases the probability of the message getting through to your Inbox.
If you work for a tire company, for example, you might add the words "TREAD", "TIRE", "SKID", "TRACTION", "BRIDGE STONE", etc. to your Good Words list.
- Where did the Bad Words list come from and can I change it?
It was created by looking at common words and phrases in spam, and collected from our 1400+ beta testers as they found additional words and phrases that commonly occur in spam, but rarely occur in non-spam emails.
Yes, you can increase or decrease the points, or delete them altogether. Yearly service contract updates will not overwrite your current Bad Words listing; it will just add more words to it.
- What is the feature Sensitivity listed in the HTML Volume menu?
In the configuration menu, go to the HTML Volume menu to define or view Max Points and Sensitivity in HTML settings.
Sensitivity refers to how sensitive the analyzer is at picking up reds, yellows, large fonts, etc. The larger the number, the more sensitive it is. Very large numbers will pick up over sized fonts and assign a penalty.
- What is feature Max Points listed in the HTML Volume menu?
Max points it the maximum number of points that HTML Volume can assign to a single message for font size violations, and bright color violations. To get the max points, a violator has to really overdo it. If you increase the sensitivity, the max points will be reached more quickly with fewer violations.
- Why does Spam Police remove HTML script?
HTML script can be used to pop up web pages, report back to the spammer that you've opened their message, or other undesirable side effects.
HTML Script is rarely used by individuals writing email messages, but could be used by marketers and spammers to get information about you.
- What is being analyzed in the Subject Analyzer?
The Subject Analyzer looks for excessive spaces between words which is a technique often used only by spammers to keep a simple subject check from working to eliminate their message.
It also looks for the commonly accepted, but rarely used "ADV" to indicate that it is an advertisement.
- Why is only one real-time blacklist selected?
It can take three to six seconds to check with a single blacklist. It takes longer to check if a spammer did not send the message.
We recommend using two at the most to keep from overloading them and because they have very similar information.
- Why can't I search for text/html in the message?
All test/html and text/plain MIME sections are decoded before being sent to the Power Filter. Spammers will Base64 encode the messages to trick text filters.
- What is Turing?
It is a great way to make sure you get all your important email even if you have very aggressive spam settings.
If an email is blocked as spam, the Turing Analyzer will send out a message that lets the sender go to a web site and take a simple test. Then their original email will be released to your Inbox..
- How does the Turing Test work?
When an email reaches the spam threshold (which you can customize if you wanted, a Turing Test Request is sent out. It is a URL link that directs the user to the www.fatpipeinc.com site where they enter character codes.
The test is extremely easy for humans, but not so easy for computers. If they pass the test, then a special "trigger" email is sent back to you, releasing the original email to your Inbox. You shouldn't see the trigger message, as it is deleted by Spam Police, but you should get the original message into your Inbox.
If you have "Add to Friends when Turing Test Passed" checked, then the original sender's email address will be added to your Friends list so they don't have to take the test next time they send you something.
The Turing Test is not on by default, but it is a great one to turn on because it allows you to get more aggressive with your spam settings without worrying that you'll miss an important email.
TROUBLESHOOTING.
- Sometimes there are messages in the spam viewer with a yellow dot, but I also get this message in my email box. Why?
The yellow dot indicates that Spam Police analyzed the message and found something that it should remove. In order to preserve the information, in case you need it, it keeps an unmodified version in the spam viewer in a safe, compressed, format. It sends your email program the modified version, but keeps the original. If you need the original, you can UnSpam it and get it back
By default the Attachments Analyzer will remove attachments that could be executed including .EXE, .SCR, .BAT., .VBE, .VBS, .CMD, .COM, etc.
You can see the list and modify the list by going to Configure.../Attachments
The other setting that is on by default is HTML Script Removal. Spam Police (by default) will remove HTML script because of the dangers of executing script from your local security context (a Microsoft concept),. You can turn this off by going to Configure.../HTML Removal.
These are the only two settings that are on by default, but you can create your own settings, such as removing ALL HTML, or removing all embedded images, or external images (which can report back that you opened your email with an HTML capable reader).
