SPAM filtering tool for RHSmith Notes accounts

• What is Postini?
• Your Message Center - Logging in
• Fine tune your filter strength
• What about spam that gets through?

What is Postini?

As you may have heard in the news recently, as much as 9 out of every ten emails sent nowadays are spam messages and things are only getting worse. (http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/11/27/uk.spam.reut/ ).

Postini is a SPAM filtering service that is provided with your Smith email account.   If you have a Smith Lotus Notes account, your Postini account has already been set up for you with default settings to begin filtering spam and viruses.  You do not need to do anything to begin using this service.  However, it is a flexible product that puts the user in control of spam and viruses.  It is up to you to decide how lenient or aggressive the filters are and/or which addresses to allow through. 

How does it work?

Spam and viruses are quarantined in a password protected message center which you may access and manage over the web.  Once spam and viruses begin to be quarantined, you will be sent a weekly email notice letting you know that something is in your Postini Message Center.  This email will provide a summary of the messages that were quarantined and a link to access your Message Center.    Please be sure to check your message center regularly to ensure that important messages are not being blocked by the filter. 

How are my existing Lotus Notes mail filtering rules affected?

This spam filtering service is the first line of defense.  Mail rules from within the Notes client are no longer necessary to filter spam or block addresses.  You don't need mail rules for spam but can still use them to sort mail. 

The Message Center

From the Message Center you can recover messages that should not be quarantined, delete the rest, and change the settings to determine how aggressive or lenient you prefer it to be.  If you see that there is an email that you do want, you can teach Postini to always allow mail from that sender, or just open it this one time.  If there is nothing you want, you may delete them or just let them live there, the Message Center will automatically clean out the oldest messages if it runs out of space. 

How do I log in?

To Login to Postini click the link in the quarantine email when you receive it, or go to http://login.postini.com

• Username: Your Email Address

• Password:  When your Postini account is created you are assigned a random password. If you did not receive the Welcome email from Postini containing your Postini password, go to the login page and attempt to login using anything you want for the password. The login will fail, however, and you will then see a "Forgot your password?" link.  Selecting that will cause Postini to email you a new password.  You can then login with that and go to Settings > Change Password to set it to the password you prefer.

Manage your Postini account

In addition to seeing what has been quarantined, you can change settings, add/remove approved senders, set the strength of the filters, and reset your password.  To take a look at your Postini Message Center settings login as described above, or alternately you can go to http://www.postini.com and click the Customer Login link in the top right corner.

When you click “Settings” :

 “Adjust Filters” in the Settings window provides:

Junk Message Blocking - Go to "Settings > Junk Quarantine Settings > Adjust Filters" make sure that the "Junk Email Blocking" is ON.

Adjust the 'strength' of the Spam filters. If you still receive a lot of spam set the filters to be more aggressive.

You can also set different levels for the various types of spam that are received.

Save any changes you have made here by clicking the "Save Changes" button.

After a few weeks of teaching Postini what your preferences are, you should find that you can log in less frequently.

What can I do about SPAM that gets through the filters?

It appears spammers make a good living at getting through the barriers we build!.  They will always work to sneak past any SPAM Filtering tool.  However, there are steps you can take to help fight back.

If you get a spam message, the best thing to do is to report it to Postini. They will then examine the message for identifying features that they can use to tweak the spam filters to do a better job in the future. Previously to submit a message was a relatively complicated procedure, however we have now simplified this so that if you open an email that you believe to be spam, you can click the "Forward to Anti-Spam" button in your Lotus Notes inbox which will forward the message to Postini with all the required headers. You can see below where the new button appears on your email when you open it in Lotus Notes.

Once you have sent the spam message to Postini you can delete it from your mailbox. There is no need to forward the spam message to the Helpdesk.  They cannot submit the message on your behalf because important headers are lost in the process of forwarding.