BrightVisions Spam Filter User Guide Version 3 Martin Harding
Table of Contents Quickstart... 2 Understanding and using the BrightVisions Spam Filter quarantine reports.... 2 Logging on to the website to manage your Quarantine... 3 Adding a blocked sender/domain... 5 Outbound scanning... 6 How the BrightVisions Spam Filter works... 7 Conventional email delivery system... 7 Email delivery system incorporating the BrightVisions Spam Filter service... 7
Quickstart There are two ways you can check your Quarantine, and perform actions such as release emails that have been caught, and block addresses from sending emails to you. They are both explained below. In some situations you will not be able to release an email, if it is classed as highly dangerous by the spam filter for example. In this situation, please contact BrightVisions and we will check the email for you before advising on why it has been blocked, or releasing it for you. Understanding and using the BrightVisions Spam Filter quarantine reports. By default, you will receive a Quarantine report from SpamReports@brightvisions.co.uk every day at 2pm. Shown below is an example report: To release emails, press Deliver if you are sure they are safe. They will appear in your inbox shortly. If you do not receive the email after pressing Deliver, please check in your Junk folder in your email client. If you know an email to be from a trusted sender, you can click Whitelist. This means that any emails marked as spam will not get stuck in the filter. Anything that contains a possible virus or malicious content will still get caught by the filter for security purposes.
Logging on to the website to manage your Quarantine As well as checking the email you receive at 2pm, you can check your Quarantine at any time by logging in to quarantine.brightvisions.co.uk with your email address and your password. To generate your password in the first instance or should you subsequently forget your password, click on Request password. The image below shows the log on screen: Once you have logged in, you will see the following screen:
This page shows you every email that has come through the spam filter, including ones that have not been caught by the filter and have been passed through to your mailbox. When you first log in, it will display all the emails you have received today, to change this click on the drop down showing Today at the top left, as shown below: To release a message that you are sure is safe, tick the tick box at the far left of the message and make sure the drop down under User options is set to either Deliver e-mail or Deliver + whitelist. Deliver email just releases the email from your spam filter, and Deliver + whitelist ensures that the sender is whitelisted to stop future messages getting stuck in the filter. To complete the request, press the button labelled Perform Action.
Adding a blocked sender/domain You can add an individual email address or an entire domain to the blocked list by clicking the Black/Whitelist button located at the top of the page. Fill in the Sender section and then press the Add button to add it to the list. Press the Save button to apply. It takes up to 1 hour for the Blacklist/Whitelist to be updated and take effect. Be careful to only block an entire domain if you are entirely sure you will never need to receive an email from any email address from that domain. It is advisable to block an individual email address if you receive spam, and only to block the domain if you receive multiple spam emails from different mailboxes at the same domain. Please contact BrightVisions if you are unsure. It is advised to not block domains like @hotmail.com, @gmail.com and @yahoo.com, as while some spammers use accounts on those services, there are a lot of genuine accounts on these domains. Whitelist allows you to allow any spam emails through from a specified email address. This does not allow emails to come through if they have been detected as Malicious (contains a link to a dangerous website, has a virus attachment etc). For this reason, emails may still get blocked from a white listed sender. In the event of this happening, please speak to BrightVisions and they will be able to either explain why he email has been blocked, or release it for you if it is a false positive.
Outbound scanning As well as scanning every email that is sent to your mailbox, the spam filter also scans every mail that is sent from your mailbox. This means that if your computer gets infected with malicious software that tries to send out emails to all of your contacts, the spam filter will stop them from being received. If you would like to see all of the emails that have been sent, and the status of them, change the drop down menu from incoming to outgoing.
How the BrightVisions Spam Filter works Conventional email delivery system A conventional email system delivers any email that it receives, regardless of if the email contains any malicious content, or is unwanted advertising. The diagram below illustrates this. Email delivery system incorporating the BrightVisions Spam Filter service The BrightVisions Spam Filter differs from a standard email system, by scanning every email that gets sent to a protected domain. It allows safe emails to continue to the users inboxes, and catches spam emails which are stored in the quarantine.