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Email - Spam Quarantine

 

How do I enroll in the Barracuda Spam Quarantine?

 

You will be auto-enrolled in the Barracuda Spam Quarantine systems when the first piece of spam email is delivered to your DU email address.

 


What is the Barracuda Spam Firewall?


The Barracuda Spam Firewall is a mail security service which sits between the Internet and the DU mail servers. The service is a hardware/software solution provided by Barracuda Networks and with on-campus user support provided by Duquesne's Computing & Technology Services. The Spam Firewall one of several layers of defense against e-mail borne security threats such as viruses, spoofing, phishing and spyware attacks.

All email addressed to an @duq.edu account is protected by the Spam Firewall.


What services does the Spam Firewall offer?


This service provides DU e-mail accounts with individualized and flexible e-mail filtering. You have the choice of how your e-mail is handled allowing you to train the system to identify both trusted e-mail senders, blocked senders, quarantine or out-right block messages which are untrustworthy. You can identify a message in in your Spam Quarantine inbox as Spam or Not Spam which will train Barracuda for your individual account.

 



How do I use the Quarantine Digest email to manage my Quarantine?

 

When the Barracuda Spam Quarantine detects that a message is spam, the message is stored in the Barracuda Spam Quarantine instead of being delivered. Quarantine digests are email messages generated by Barracuda that list each account's quarantined messages. These messages will be sent to your email from Barracuda Spam Firewall (nospam@duq.edu) and will have a Subject of "Spam Quarantine Summary".

Quarantine digests display the date/time of delivery, the message's "From" address, and the message's "Subject", and Actions to take.

Using a mail client or WebMail you can release a single message from the Quarantine, to do so click on the Deliver action next to the messages subject.

You also have the options to Whitelist and Delete messages in your Quarantine inbox via this digest message.

NOTE: Accessing your Spam Quarantine Inbox will prevent a digest from being delivered to you for that day.

Exempting Quarantine Digests from Local Filters

 

Some email clients (such as Microsoft Outlook) have built-in message filtering that can be enabled by the end user. These filters can result in quarantine digests being filtered by the end user's email client. In most cases, you can configure a list for built-in message filtering.

For example, when you enable the "Junk E-Mail" filter or "Adult Content" filter in Microsoft Outlook, a list rule is automatically created that exempts specific addresses from these filters. To edit the list, select Tools|Rules Wizard , and add the "From" address in your quarantine digest to the list


How do I access my Spam Firewall quarantine inbox?


To access your Spam Firewall quarantine, go to the URL http://www.duq.edu/nospam and login with your MultiPass username and password. If you are having problems using MultiPass please visit http://www.duq.edu/multipass. NOTE: Accessing your Spam Quarantine Inbox will prevent a digest from being delivered to you for that day.


How can I disable my Spam Firewall service?

You can not "disable" SPAM filtering, all message addressed to an @duq.edu address will be filtered for SPAM.



Can you give me some tips for managing my Quarantine Inbox?

Now that you have a Quarantine Inbox on our Barracuda Spam Firewall, there are a few things you can do to make it much more effective at fighting spam. Here are a few helpful hints from our more experienced customers:

Limit Use of Blocked E-mail Address List
The one thing you don't want to do is add the 'From:' address of every piece of spam you receive to your blocked e-mail list. The vast majority of spam contains a forged 'From:' address. It could belong to an actual user somewhere on the Internet (though in no way associated with the spammer), or it could be a randomly-generated address. Either way, that address will most likely be used to send only one or two messages, then dropped. Adding these addresses to your block list wastes resources and does very little to block spam. There are exceptions, of course. Generally, these will be in the form of advertisements from legitimate businesses. If you receive a number of unsolicited emails from the same address and are unable to subscribe from the source, then this would be a good example of when you could add the From address to your block list. But that shouldn't be the first thing you do in response to any spam.

Quarantine Settings
Spam Statistical Analysis 101 - Managing spam is a game of statistical analysis. Most anti-spam technologies use a scoring methodology to assign 'spam points' to a given e-mail message. The more points a message receives, the greater the probability it has of being spam. The fewer the points, the more likely it is a valid e-mail message from a trusted source. As you continue to read the information below, keep this in mind: higher scores are 'bad messages', lower scores are 'good messages'.

Your Quarantine Inbox is set to use the default settings set by CTS.

Spam Filtering Actions
As an e-mail message is received from the Internet, a spam probability score is assigned to that message. There are six basic actions which your Quarantine Inbox can perform on the e-mail message: Deliver, Whitelist, Whitelist+Not Spam, Delete, Classify as Spam, Classify as Not Spam. Remember the scoring principles discussed above, the lower the score, the more likely you want the message, the higher the score, the more likely you don't.

With the System Default Settings, messages scoring below 2.8 points are delivered directly to your e-mail inbox, only messages that score between 2.9 and 5.8 get put into your Quarantine Inbox, and only those that score over 5.9 get blocked. There are certain types of messages which initially may have spam-like characteristics, but are still legitimate e-mail.

If you're getting some legitimate email that's quarantined, you might want to white list those particular senders.

Using an e-mail whitelist
Most anti-spam products let you maintain a list of trusted e-mail addresses which should never be subjected to spam scoring. This list of trusted addresses is called a 'whitelist'. Early on you might need to add individual addresses to this whitelist, particularly for newsletters or other mass email that could look like spam even if it isn't. The Quarantine Inbox web interface makes adding addressees to this a matter of point and click simplicity.

Eventually, you'll arrive at a combination of Whitelists, Blacklists and Spam/Not Spam designations that give YOU the best protection against spam without accidently blocking (or inadvertently tagging or quarantining) legitimate email. But remember thwarting spam will be an ongoing battle for the foreseeable future.

Advanced tools and techniques (Spam/Not Spam)
Another thing you can do with the Barracuda is to use the Bayesian spam filter. The Bayesian filter scores individual words in each email as to its likelihood of being an indicator of spam. To make this filter effective, you have to train your Quarantine Inbox by teaching it what YOU consider spam and what isn't. Please note that until you have marked at least 200 messages as 'Spam' AND marked at least 250 messages 'Not Spam', the Bayesian filter is not going to be effective. But after you complete this training process you will notice a significant improvement in the ability of the Quarantine to filter your e-mail .

One thing to be aware of in classifying email as Spam. Sometimes spammers include what's called "word salad" in their messages, specifically to confuse Bayesian filters. This can be anywhere from a couple of lines to several paragraphs of words that have nothing at all to do with their spam. Sometimes it's a portion of a book or magazine article, sometimes it's just random words. If you classify those as Spam, it will cause the Bayesian filter to give those words a higher spam score than it should. So you need to look at every message before classifying it as Spam. Those that contain word salads should just be deleted.

If you would like additional assistance or information, would like to offer additional spam fighting tips, or have suggestions/comments for these instructions, then please contact the CTS Help Desk.

Someone tried to send me an email and got a bounce back error referencing Spam Haus or Barracuda Central

 

This can occur if your Internet Service Provider (ISP), IP address, or email account is blacklisted by Spam Haus or Barracuda.

For more information click here.