The filter checks your incoming messages against SPAM, known viruses, and other dangerous content, preventing them from reaching your desktop. It is a server side solution which means you don't have any software to install on your system to get your mail fitered. With the web based interface, you are directly connected to the filter, where you will see blocked spams and will be able to tune some settings of the filter.
What is SPAM?
SPAM is an unsolicited or undesired email message. Generally used for advertisements, these messages can quickly fill your mailbox. These message are generally not dangerous, but really annoying.
What are viruses and dangerous content?
Viruses are small software programs that can exploit and let malicious people take control of your computer. They can be sent to you by email as attachments, and infect your system once you open it (some can even be enabled without being opened). Dangerous content is the same, except that they can be enabled by more intelligent means, hiding themselves directly into the content of the message, or even being targeted from the outside by a bounce link into the mail. These are very difficult to be detected by a standard mail filter because the real virus is not really included with the message. The filter performs exhaustive checks on every message to prevent potentially risky mail from reaching your mailbox.
What criteria does the filter to use to determine if a message is SPAM?
The filter perfroms a number of tests in order to detect SPAM with the best accuracy possible. It uses amongst others, some simple keyword or keyphrase matching, worldwide SPAM databases and statistical token computing. The aggregation of all these techniques will generate an overall score for each message, upon which the filter will decide if the message is SPAM. As SPAM is a really fast moving target, these rules are also adapted as fast as possible.
Does the filter make mistakes?
As the filter is an automated system, it can make mistakes. There are basically two kinds of error that can be generated:
False Negatives
False negatives are SPAM messages that slipped through the filter and reach your mailbox without being detected.
False Positives
False positives are more annoying errors as they are valid messages that are blocked by the system. The filter is optimised to reduce these mistakes as much as possible. However, altough it is very very rare, this can happen. For this reason, i7MEDIA gives you access to the real-time quarantine and periodic reports to help you minimize the risk of message loss.
What can I do to correct the filter?
If you notice the filter has made a mistake, the best thing to do is help correct it by sending feedback to i7MEDIA. Do not think the best solution is just to whitelist or blacklist senders as this is just a band aid. Although it sometimes is the only possibility, it is always better to find out the real cause of the error, and correct it.
