Mailguard Anti-Spam

Overview

Mailguard is an anti-spam web portal allowing for user customization of spam thresholds and management of e-mail quarantines. It is available at mailguard.potsdam.edu, or by following the Mailguard link in BearMail.

With Mailguard, CTS is giving users much more flexibility in how they manage their SUNY Potsdam e-mail. Mailguard takes e-mail content filtering to the next level by allowing users to set their own thresholds for what constitutes spam, as well as to decide the ultimate fate of these unsolicited messages.

What Do I Need To Do?

Nothing. With Mailguard, the major change from a user's perspective is that when a message is determined to be spam, it will NOT be delivered to the destination user's e-mail account at all. Instead it will be saved in that user's spam quarantine area, only reachable from within the Mailguard web interface.

Users will only need to login to Mailguard if they wish to opt-out of the quarantine service. Also, if they are concerned that they may be missing a message they that feel should have been delivered to them, the first sensible place to look is the Mailguard quarantine area.

Quarantine

By default, when a message is determined to be spam, it will be saved in the recipient's spam quarantine. At this point if the user wishes to review his or her quarantine to release any mis-identified items, he or she may login to the interface and review the 'spam cache.'

Users will note that in addition to the spam quarantine, there are two other quarantine areas, or caches: non-spam, and bad headers. All non-virus e-mail is classified and put into one of these three areas. These caches are kept for user review, as well as for filter training purposes (the reason non-spam is cached). If users wish to confirm the status of the messages in their caches, it helps our content-scanning system more accurately classify future e-mail.

Note: Neither confirmation nor deletion of mail items is required. Confirmation will help our effort against spam, but if you feel you do not have the time to do so, it is better to simply click the 'Delete all items' button. Deletion is also not required, as any unconfirmed items will be purged after an age-out period.

Settings

CTS has come up with a set of defaults that make sense for our campus. If users wish to change how they receive their mail, they will need to login to the Mailguard interface and customize their settings.

  • High: Default setting. Messages determined to be spam will be quarantined.
  • Medium: Opt out setting. This setting will opt users out of the quarantine feature should they wish to continue to do client-side filtering based on ***SPAM*** tagged subjects.
  • Low: Not recommended. In addition to spam tagged subjects, users will also see messages determined to have bad headers. These are almost always spam.
  • Off: Not recommended. This will pass on all non-virus e-mail with no spam or bad header filtering at all.

For even more customizability, users may click on the 'Settings' tab at the top of the Mailguard interface. Settings specific to their e-mail address can be reached by clicking on the address.

White and Black Lists

White and black listing is also possible with Mailguard. Any message from an address listed in a user's whitelist will never be considered spam (though it may be blocked for other reasons, i.e. bad headers, virus, etc). On the contrary, any messages from an address in a user's blacklist will always be treated as spam.

Help

Mailguard has a very rich and in-depth help manual, always reachable from the 'Help' link at the top of the page. If you need additional assistance, please contact the CTS Helpdesk at x2083 or helpdesk@potsdam.edu.