WADSNET MaiLSafe SPAM Firewall

WADSNET MailSafe SPAM Firewall
Last updated: 01/23/2006

How to Sign Up

The new SPAM filter is available for our customers immediately. Setup is not required. Once your email account starts getting SPAM, our SPAM firewall will email you a message.

How it Works

More than 90% of the email messages are SPAM or virus related. Our new SPAM Filter can reduce these junk emails by up to 98%. The filter is easy to use and will guide users through day to day use.

Upon entering our system, your SPAM Filter sorts messages into 5 categories: clean messages, virus messages, known SPAM, questionable messages, and doubtful messages. Clean messages believed to be free from SPAM or viruses will be sent to your inbox without intervention. Virus messages are messages with viruses and are cleaned then a notification is sent to you. Known SPAM will be automatically deleted upon entering our system. It will never reach your inbox. Questionble messages that seem like SPAM will be put into a Quarantine Inbox and held for your instructions. Doubtful messages are sent to you and we inject {SPAM?} to the header of the subject. The messages have a low spam value or the spam is too new to recognize. You can create a rule in your email client to delete these messages, use the plugin or forward the email to spamlocal@wadsnet.com.

Take some time to learn how to utilize and "train" your filter. After one week of training, most of our users are very happy with the results. The instructions below will answer most of the questions pertaining to the spam filter. If you have questions or suggestions, please email spam@wadsnet.com.

FIRST USE

When your SPAM Filter is set up, you will receive an initial “welcome” email with a “link” to your Quarantine Inbox. Click on the link to go to the SPAM CONTROL PANEL.

SPAM CONTROL PANEl - training your filter

Your SPAM Filter is very smart, but it needs your help to become even smarter. By going through the messages and indicating which are true SPAM and which are not, the filter "learns" how to better deal with future messages. It takes about a week to train the filter. While training the filter takes some time when you first get set up, it will save you invaluable time in the future by reducing the number of messages in your Quarantine Inbox and will protect you from missing important, valid messages.

You may select multiple emails for delivery, deletion or to be white listed by using the box on the left hand side or select on email at a time by using the “actions” on the right of the email.

Whitelist:
If you have messages that are “quarantined” that should not “quarantined”, highlight them by selecting the box to the left of the message and select “whitelist”. From this point forward that email address will bypass the filter and be allowed every time an email is sent from that email address.

Deliver:
You can deliver a message one time and not have it added to your white list. Simply select the message(s) and click on the deliver box. They will be delivered but will not be added to your white list.

Delete:
This option simply deletes the email messages. Simply deleting messages does not help the filter learn anything. Remember to use the "Classify as Spam" button before deleting the message so that the filter will not accept similar messages in the future.

Classify NOT as spam: (Optional)
If you select multiple messages, you can mark them not to be tagged in the future as SPAM.

Classify as spam: (Optional)
If you select multiple messages, you can mark them as spam and you will no longer receive this message.

For those more advanced users – you can click on the preferences tab and make adjustments to the spam filter. Most of our users do not use this area but more advanced users may find some of the features beneficial.

DAILY Spam QUARANTINE SUMMARY EMail

Below is an example of your daily Spam Quarantine Summary with a list of these questionable messages received that week. You may either click on one of the actions to the right of the message or click on the link that says "To view your quarantine inbox or manage your preferences, click here".

TROUBLESHOOTING

Your username and password automatically change daily and last only 24 hours. This means you can't bookmark your Firewall page - you have to enter using the link on your Daily Quarantine Summary email. Logging in with an old username or password will result in a Session Expired error (see below).

If you receive an Session Expired error on login, do the following:

Open your web browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox, etc) to http://mailsafe.wadsnet.net:8000
Input your email address in the username block and click on the “create new password” icon at the bottom. The spam filter will email you a new password link immediately.
Close the login page and start your email client (Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape, Webmail, etc).
Find the new email from the "WADSNET MailSafe Spam Firewall", simply click on the link and you will be taken to your quarantine.

Please note that passwords expire daily. However new passwords are sent in your daily/weekly quarantine email. If you wish to check your “quarantine” before receiving your daily message, you can perform the same steps to receive a “link” to your quarantine. For more troubleshooting and FAQ, visit the FAQ page.

PLUG-IN

You can download and install the Microsoft Outlook Plug-in to help us train the SPAM firewall. The plug-in adds two buttons to Microsoft Outlook. If the message is SPAM, click on the red envelope. If the message is NOT spam, click on the green envelope.

You can download the plug-in from http://mailsafe.wadsnet.com:8000. Click on "Get Mail Client Plugins Here", save it and then run it to install. Note: The plug-in only works for Microsoft Outlook 2000, XP and 2003.