You can either use the quarantine inbox to classify your spam emails, or you can use a plugin for Microsoft Outlook.
You can find the link to outlook add-in and the quarantine inbox here.
Using your Quarantine Inbox #
After logging into the quarantine interface, select the QUARANTINE INBOX tab to view a list of your quarantined messages. When you first start using the quarantine interface, you should view this list on a daily basis and classify as many messages as you can. Clicking on an email displays the message.
The Email Security Gateway has a Bayesian learning engine which learns how to deal with future messages based on the ones you classify as spam and not spam. The learning engine becomes more effective over time as you teach the system how to classify messages and as you set up rules based on your Allow List and Block List.
To effectively “train” your Bayesian database, you must classify at least 200 spam messages and 200 not spam messages from your Quarantine Inbox, which will train the Bayesian database as to what word or phrase patterns that appear, perhaps multiple times, throughout a message you consider to be valid content or characteristic of spam. Continue to classify an equal number of each type of message as needed.
The following table describes the actions you can perform from this page.
| Action | Description |
|---|---|
| Deliver | Delivers the selected message to your standard inbox.Note: If you want to classify a message or add it to your Allow List, make sure to do so before delivering the message to your inbox. Once the Email Security Gateway delivers a message, it is removed from your quarantine list. |
| Allow List | Allow List adds the selected message to your Allow List so all future emails from this sender are not quarantined unless the message contains a virus or banned attachment type.The Email Security Gateway adds the sending email address exactly as it appears in the message to your personal Allow List.Note that some commercial mailings may come from one of several servers such as mail3.abcbank.com, and a subsequent message may come from mail2.abcbank.com. See the section on managing your Allow Lists and Block Lists for tips on specifying Allow List entries with greater effectiveness. |
| Delete | Deletes the selected message from your quarantine list. The main reason to delete messages is to help you keep track of which quarantine messages you have reviewed. You cannot recover messages you have deleted. |
| Classify as Not Spam | Classifies the selected message as not spam. Note: Some bulk commercial email may be considered useful by some users and spam by others. For this reason, classifying such messages may not be very effective because users may counteract each others’ classification. Instead of classifying bulk commercial email, it may be more effective to add it to your Allow List (if you wish to receive such messages) or Block List (if you prefer not to receive them). |
| Classify as Spam | Classifies the selected message as spam. |
Changing Your User Preferences #
After logging into your quarantine interface, depending on your account permissions, you can use the PREFERENCES tab to change your account password, modify your quarantine and spam settings, and manage your Allow List and Block List.
Changing Your Account Password #
To change your account password, do one of the following:
- On the quarantine interface login page, click Create New Password, or
- After logging into your quarantine interface, go to PREFERENCES > Password. This option is not available if single sign-on has been enabled via LDAP or Radius.
In the provided fields, enter your existing password and enter your new password twice. Click Save Changes when finished.
Note Changing your password breaks the links in your existing quarantine summary reports so you cannot delete, deliver, or Allow List messages from those reports. New quarantine summary reports will contain updated links that you can use the same as before.
Changing Your Quarantine Settings #
The following table describes the quarantine settings you can change from the PREFERENCES > Quarantine Settings page, depending on how the administrator has configured your account:
| Quarantine Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Enable Quarantine | Whether the Email Security Gateway quarantines your messages.If you select Yes, the Email Security Gateway does not deliver quarantined messages to your general email inbox, but you can view these messages from the quarantine interface and quarantine summary reports.If you select No, all messages that would have been quarantined for you are delivered to your general email inbox with the subject line prefixed with [QUAR]:. The Email Security Gateway administrator can modify this prefix. |
| Notification Interval | The frequency the Email Security Gateway sends you quarantine summary reports. The default is daily. The Email Security Gateway only sends quarantine summary reports when one or more of your emails have been quarantined.If you select Never, you can still view your quarantined messages from the quarantine interface, but you will not receive quarantine summary reports. |
| Notification Address | The email address the Email Security Gateway should use to deliver your quarantine summary report. Leave this field blank to use the email address associated with your user account. |
| Default Language | The language in which you want to receive your quarantine notifications. This setting also sets the default encoding for handling unknown charactersets during filtering. All email notifications from the Email Security Gateway are in UTF8 encoding. |
Enabling and Disabling Spam Scanning of your Email #
If you do not want the Email Security Gateway scanning your emails for spam content, you can disable spam filtering from the PREFERENCES > Spam Settings page. From this page you can also change the default spam scoring levels that determine when your emails are tagged, quarantined or blocked.
When the Email Security Gateway receives an email for you, it scores the message for its spam probability. This score ranges from 0 (definitely not spam) to 10 or higher (definitely spam). Based on this score, the Email Security Gateway either allows, quarantines, or blocks the message.
A setting of 10 for any setting disables that option. The following table describes the fields on the PREFERENCES > Spam Settings page.
Adding Email Addresses and Domains to Your Allow LIst and Block List #
The PREFERENCES > Allow List/Block List page lets you specify email addresses and domains from which you do or do not want to receive emails.
| List Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Allow List | The list of email addresses or domains from which you always wish to receive messages. The only time the Email Security Gateway blocks a message from someone on your Allow List is when the message contains a virus or a disallowed attachment file extension. |
| Block List | The list of senders from whom you never want to receive messages. The Email Security Gateway immediately discards messages from senders on your Block List. These messages are not tagged or quarantined and cannot be recovered. The sender does not receive a notice that the message was deleted, and neither do you. The only time a Block Listed email address is delivered is if the same email address also appears in your Allow List. |
To add senders to your Allow List or Block List, follow these steps:
- Go to the PREFERENCES > Allow List/Block List page.
- A list of the email addresses on your Allow List and Block List appears on this page.
- To delete an Allow List or Block List entry, click the trash can icon next to the address.
- To add an entry, type an email address into the appropriate field and click the Add button.
Tips on specifying addresses
When adding addresses to your Allow List and Block List, note the following tips:
- If you enter a full email address, such as johndoe@yahoo.com, just that user is specified. If you enter just a domain, such as yahoo.com, all users in that domain are specified.
- If you enter a domain such as netaccess.ca, all subdomains are also included, such as my.netaccess.ca and test.netaccess.ca .
- Mass mailings often come from domains that do not resemble the company’s website name. For example, you may want to receive mailings from historybookclub.com, but you will find that this website sends out its mailing from the domain hbcfyi.com. Examine the From: address of an actual mailing that you are trying to Allow List or Block List to determine what to enter.
Changing the Language of the Quarantine Interface
You can change the language of your quarantine interface by selecting a language from the drop-down menu in the upper right corner of the QUARANTINE INBOX and PREFERENCES tabs. Supported languages include Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French, and others. The language you select is only applied to your individual quarantine interface. No other user’s interface is affected.
Microsoft Outlook Add-in for Classifying Messages #
Instead of using your quarantine inbox to classify your email messages, you can download a client add-in that lets you classify messages from your MS Outlook application.
Downloading the Add-in
To download and install the client add-in that is needed to classify messages from MS Outlook:
- Go to the login page of the administration interface and click the link below the login information.
- After clicking the link, you’ll see a popup prompting you to save the executable file BsfOutlookAddIn.exe. Click Save File.
- Close MS Outlook on your system.
- Run the file and follow the instructions in the setup wizard to install the add-in on your local system or network.
- Re-start MS Outlook.
Using the Microsoft Outlook Add-in #
Classifying Messages as Spam or Not-Spam
After downloading and installing the add-in, you can begin classifying messages using the green checkmark and the red X buttons in your MS Outlook client. The green button marks messages as not spam and the red button marks messages as spam.
The MS Outlook add-in is configured to automatically:
- Add email addresses associated with sent messages and new contacts to the Allow List.
- Move spam-declared messages to the Deleted Items folder in your mail client.
- Add the ‘From:’ email address within ‘Not-Spam’-declared messages to the Allow List.
