Barracuda Spam Control System 1. General Information The Barracuda anti-spam server inspects all email coming into campus from the Internet for spam and either delivers the message to your email inbox, quarantines the message for your review, or blocks the message altogether. The device only checks email coming from off-campus, it has no effect on mail sent within the College email system. The Barracuda device has the advantage of allowing each user to decide what they do or do not consider spam, or you may accept the system defaults if you choose. 2. Email Delivery of Spam Control Summary At 8:00 a.m. each day you will receive an email similar to the one below which will list messages that have been quarantined during the previous 24 hours. While you may choose at this point to either deliver, whitelist, or delete each message, it is preferable to click the click here link at the bottom of the page for more options. Clicking this link automatically logs you into your account on the Barracuda server. From there you can classify each quarantined message as either spam or not spam, allowing the server to learn your individual preferences.
3. Logging in to the Barracuda Administrative Screens You may also log in to the server at any time by going to https://spamfilter.berea.edu (Note the https, as this is a secured server you must include this). Your username and password are the same as for your network and regular email login. 4. Updating Your Personal Spam Database Classifying Email Flagged by the System (Whitelist, Spam and Not Spam) After clicking the Login button your quarantine inbox will open on the server. Check the box by the message you want to manage. Click Whitelist to deliver the message and flag that sender never to be quarantined again. Click Classify as Spam to delete the message and update your personal preference database. Click Classify as Not-Spam to deliver the message and update your personal preference database. Updating you personal database allows the system to learn your individual preferences and, over time, adjust accordingly.
5. Adjust Default Settings for Your Particular Email Box If you feel spam is still reaching your inbox, or the system is quarantining more messages than you would like, you may adjust the system wide settings to you preference. Click the Preferences tab, then click Spam Settings. Change Use Systems Defaults from Yes to No and click Save Changes. You may now adjust the settings to your preference by changing the number by each of the three settings. Increasing the numbers allows more messages to reach your inbox. Decreasing the numbers causes more messages to be caught by the server. Numbers may be incremented by tenths. After you have adjusted the numbers, click Save Changes. Tag Score delivers messages with a score between the chosen value and the Quarantine Score value to your email with the message Possible Spam appended to the subject. Quarantine Score places any message with a score between the chosen value and the Block Score value to your quarantine inbox on the Barracuda server. Block Score automatically deletes any message with a score equal to or greater than the chosen value. Use Block Score carefully as blocked messages can never be retrieved. Similarly, be careful when deleting messages or classifying them as spam as once deleted, they can never be retrieved. Do not set the same value for any two scores (i.e. both Tag Score and Quarantine Score to 4) as the system will not know which action you wish it to take and will take no action. Note: The Recommended settings have been found in our testing to be far too lenient, and we do not recommend using the Recommended settings. The system default settings we established as 10 for Tag Score, 2.5 for Quarantine Score, and 6 for Block Score tend to catch most spam while having few false positives. See screen on following page:
6. Permanently Allow or Block Messages You can permanently allow or block messages from individual addresses by using whitelists and blacklists. Whitelists always allow messages from that sender to be delivered. Blacklists block all messages from the blacklisted sender. Messages you whitelist in your Quarantine Inbox are automatically added to your whitelist. To manage whitelists and blacklists manually, click Whitelist/Blacklist from the Preferences screen. To add to your whitelist, type in the complete address and click Add. This will flag the system to never quarantined mail from that address. Do the same to permanently block addresses by using the Blacklist field. To remove addresses from whitelists and blacklists, click the trashcan icon next to that message.