Spam Firewall
User’s Guide
Table of Contents
Managing your Quarantine Inbox »
Receiving Messages from the Plateau Spam Firewall »
Using the Quarantine Interface »
Logging into the Quarantine Interface »
Changing your User Preferences »
Changing Your Quarantine Settings »
Enabling and Disabling Spam Scanning of your Email »
Quarantine Setup and Settings »
Adding Email Addresses and Domains to Your Whitelist and Blacklist »
Tips on specifying addresses »
Managing your Quarantine
Inbox
This chapter describes how to check the quarantined messages, classify messages as spam or not spam, and modify user preferences using the Plateau Spam Firewall interface. This chapter contains the following topics:
Receiving Messages from the Plateau Spam Firewall
The Plateau Spam Firewall sends two types of messages:
- Greeting Message
- Quarantine Summary Report
The first time the Plateau Spam Firewall quarantines an email intended for you, the system sends a greeting message with a subject line of User Quarantine Account Information as shown in Figure 1 .
The greeting message contains the following information:
Welcome to the Plateau Spam Firewall. This message contains the information you will need to access your Spam Quarantine and Preferences.
Your account has been set to the following username:
Username: <your email address>
Note: Your users name and password are exactly the same as your Plateau Internet email account.Access your Spam Quarantine directly using the following link: https://spambox.plateautel.net/
The Plateau Spam Firewall automatically provides your login information (username) and the link to access the quarantine interface. Save this email because future messages from the system do not contain your login information.
Figure 1. User Quarantine Account Information
The Plateau Spam Firewall sends a daily quarantine summary report (Figure 2 ) so you can view the quarantined messages you did not receive. From the quarantine summary report you can also add messages to your whitelist, delete messages, and have messages delivered to your inbox.
Figure 2 shows an example of a quarantine summary report.
Figure 2. Quarantine Summary Report
Using the Quarantine Interface
As shown above in Figure 2 , at the end of every quarantine summary report is a link to the quarantine interface where you can set additional preferences and classify messages as spam and not spam.
Logging into the Quarantine Interface
To log into your quarantine interface:
1. Click the link provided at the bottom of the Quarantine Summary Report (Figure 2 above).Result: The login page appears Figure 2 .
2. Enter your username and password, and click Login.
Your login information resides in the greeting message sent to you from the Plateau Spam Firewall.
Note: Your username and password are exactly the same as your Plateau Internet email account.
Figure 3. Firewall Logon
After logging into the quarantine interface, select the QUARANTINE INBOX tab to view a list of your quarantined messages as shown Figure 4 below. 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.
Figure 4. Quarantine Inbox
The Plateau Spam Firewall has a learning engine that 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 whitelist and blacklist.
Clicking on an email displays the quarantined message.
Table 1 below describes the actions you can perform from this page.
Table 1. Quarantine Classifications
| Action | Description |
| Deliver | Delivers the selected message to your standard email inbox. Note: If you want to classify a message or add it to your whitelist, make sure to do so before delivering the message to your inbox. Once the Plateau Spam Firewall delivers a message, it is removed from your quarantine list. |
| Whitelist + Not Spam | Adds the selected message to your whitelist so all future emails from this sender are not quarantined unless the message contains a virus or banned attachment type. Plus classifies the selected message as not spam. The Plateau Spam Firewall adds the sending email address exactly as it appears in the message to your personal whitelist. 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. Some bulk commercial email may be considered useful by some users and spam by others. Instead of classifying bulk commercial email, it may be more effective to add it to your whitelist (if you wish to receive such messages) or blacklist (if you prefer not to receive them). See the section on managing your whitelists and blacklists for tips on specifying whitelists 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. |
Changing your User Preferences
After logging into your quarantine interface, you can use the PREFERENCES tab to modify your quarantine and spam settings, and manage your whitelist and blacklist as shown in Figure 5 below.
Figure 5. Spambox Preferences
Changing Your Quarantine Settings
Table 2 below describes the quarantine settings you can change from the PREFERENCES>Quarantine Settings page.
Table 2. Quarantine Settings
| Quarantine Setting | Description |
| Enable Quarantine | Whether the Plateau Spam Firewall quarantines your messages. If you select Yes, the Plateau Spam Firewall 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 Plateau Spam Firewall administrator can modify this prefix. |
| Notification Interval | The frequency the Plateau Spam Firewall sends you quarantine summary reports. The default is daily. The Plateau Spam Firewall 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 Plateau Spam Firewall should use to deliver your quarantine summary report. |
| Default Language | The language in which you want to receive your quarantine notifications. This setting also sets the default encoding for handling unknown character sets during filtering. All email notifications from the Plateau Spam Firewall are in UTF8 encoding. |
Enabling and Disabling Spam Scanning of your Email
If you do not want the Plateau Spam Firewall scanning your emails for spam content, you can disable spam filtering from the PREFERENCES > Spam Settings page shown in Figure 6 below.
From this page you can also change the default spam scoring levels that determine when your emails are tagged, quarantined or blocked.
Figure 6. Enabling and Disabling Spam Scanning
When the Plateau Spam Firewall 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 Plateau Spam Firewall either allows, quarantines, or blocks the message.
A setting of 10 for any setting disables that option.
Table 3 describes the fields on the PREFERENCES > Spam Settings page.
Table 3. Spam Settings
| Setting | Description |
| Spam Filter Enable/Disable | |
| Enable Spam Filtering | Select Yes for the Plateau Spam Firewall to scan your emails for spam. Select No to have all your messages delivered to you without being scanned for spam. |
| Spam Scoring | |
| Use System Defaults | Select Yes to use the default scoring levels. To configure the scoring levels yourself, select No and make the desired changes in the Spam Scoring Levels section described below. |
| Tag score | Messages with a score above this threshold, but below the quarantine threshold, are delivered to you with the word [BULK] added to the subject line. Any message with a score below this setting is automatically allowed. The default value is 3.5. |
| Quarantine score | Messages with a score above this threshold, but below the block threshold, are forwarded to your quarantine mailbox. The default setting is 10 (quarantine disabled). To enable the quarantine feature, this setting must have a value lower than the block threshold. |
| Spam Filter Enable/Disable | |
| Block score | Messages with a score above this threshold are not delivered to your inbox. Depending on how the system is configured, the Plateau Spam Firewall may notify you and the sender that a blocked message could not be delivered. The default value is 9. |
Note: Plateau Internet does not recommend that you change the Default Spam Scoring Settings. These settings are configured for your best possible protection and will change as email practices change.
Adding Email Addresses and Domains to Your Whitelist and Blacklist
The PREFERENCES > Whitelist/Blacklist page lets you specify email addresses and domains from which you do or do not want to receive emails as shown below in Figure 7 .
Figure 7. Whitelist/Blacklist
To whitelist or blacklist senders, follow these steps:
1. Go to the PREFERENCES>Whitelist/Blacklist page.
A list of your existing whitelisted and blacklisted addresses appears on this page.
2. To delete a whitelist or a blacklist entry, click the trash can icon next to the address.
3. To add an entry, type an email address into the appropriate field, and click the corresponding Add button.
Table 4. Whitelist/Blacklist
| List Type | Description |
| Whitelist | The list of email addresses or domains from which you always wish to receive messages. The only time the Plateau Spam Firewall blocks a message from someone on your whitelist is when the message contains a virus or a disallowed attachment file extension. |
| Blacklist | The list of senders from whom you never want to receive messages. The Plateau Spam Firewall immediately discards messages from senders on your blacklist. 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 blacklisted email address is delivered is if the same email address also appears in your whitelist. |
When adding addresses to your whitelist and blacklist, 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 plateautel.net, all subdomains are also included, such as test.plateautel.net.
- Mass mailings often come from domains that do not resemble the company’s Web site name. For example, you may want to receive mailings from historybookclub.com, but you will find that this site sends out its mailing from the domain hbcfyi.com. Examine the From: address of an actual mailing that you are trying to whitelist or blacklist 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 interface is affected.
Changing your Email and Firewall Account Password
For your convenience your plateautel.net email and Plateau Spam Firewall passwords are the same. To change your account password, do the following:
1. Visit http://webmail.plateautel.net and log in with your plateautel.net username and password.
Note: If you cannot log into your plateautel.net email account, please contact a Customer Service Representative at 800.432.2369 during normal business hours to verify your personal information, and reset your password.
2. Click Options then User Profile as shown below in Figure 8
Figure 8. Options – User Profile
3. Account Password then confirm.
4. Select Update Profile
Note: Changing your password breaks the links in your existing quarantine summary reports so you cannot delete, deliver, or whitelist messages from those reports. New quarantine summary reports will contain updated links that you can use the same as before.
