Mail Servers updated this weekend
Sent 4/4/2004
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Greetings,
This weekend we upgraded the mail servers from IMail version 8.05HF2 to version 8.1.
Some of the changes you may notice in using your email accounts on the server.
1. The web interface to access mail has changed dramatically and so far appears to be run quite a bit faster than the older version.
FYI: in case you have never used the web interface you can access your mail remotely by going opening a web browser (Internet Explorer, etc…) and entering http://www.domainname.com:8383 where domainname.com is the name of your hosted domain. Then just enter your username and your email password and you have access to any new mail that has come into the server since you last checked your mail. Plus you can send mail through this same application.
2. Mail that is either caught in the spam filters or triggers the filters to examine the mail will insert some information in the subject line of the message. The benefit for you is that should a potential spam email show up in your in-box (email that did not trip enough triggers to actually be quarantined) it will have an obvious flag indicating that it might be spam.
For example:
SPAM-Connection Scott Be Your Own Boss
SPAM-Phrase SPAM-Connection she said its over
SPAM-Statistical V=E3lium for less
SPAM-URL-DBL Look Great in 2004, while sleeping.
The following is a listing of what those subject inserts might be and what they mean. Note in example #2 that some items could contain multiple inserts if the mail trips additional triggers. Below are the possible inserts and what they mean.
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SPAM-Connection
– Activated a “connection filter” trigger when the sending server tried to connect to our server. Either due to the sending source being found on an external blacklist or the sending sever is not “correctly” configured to industry standards. Mail that fail two of our ten connection tests are automatically deleted by the system.
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SPAM-Statistical
– This is the first part of the general “content filters”. The “statistical filter” looks a random sample of 15 words in the email and compares it to a dictionary with the words given a “probability” score as to being spam. To trigger this filter the examined words must exceed a 90% probability that it is spam before the filter is triggered.
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SPAM-Phrase
– Second phase of the general “content filter”. This filter looks at specific phases in both the body of the email as well as the subject line of the email. If it finds the phase it will quarantine the email.
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SPAM-HTML-Features
– After the general “content filter” the system will analyze the formatting of the message looking for things like “invalid tags, deceptive URL (when a URL “looks” like it will take you one place but actually will direct you somewhere else) and deceptive text. A common example of this type are the emails that are made to look like they were sent by a Bank, eBay or PayPal but were instead sent by someone trying to get your credit information.
This part of the filter is looking at five of nine possible items and if it detects any two of those five examined conditions it will quarantine the mail.
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SPAM-URL-DBL
– This is a blacklist of domains maintained by our email server software vendor. If a piece of mail is sent from a domain on this list it is quarantined.
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Of course we continue to quarantine any emails that contain the typical attachment types that are generally associated with virus/worm activity.
As always if you have questions or comments on our service please let us know.
Dave Riddle
Technical Director
Summit Internet Services