Using Spasm

First, some definitions:

• Filters: These are the backbone of Spasm, the basic list of what can and cannot send mail to our mail server. The complete set of filters available can be viewed in the Custom setting. Most users will find the basic settings of Off, Low, Medium, and High to be sufficient.
• Blacklist: This is a list of addresses, domain names, hosts, and/or servers you have entered into the Blacklist section of Spasm. Email from entries on your Blacklist will automatically be quarantined in Spasm.
• Whitelist: This is a list of addresses, hosts, and/or servers you have entered into the Whitelist section of Spasm. Email from whitelisted entities will pass through Spasm into your mailbox. The domain name portion of an email address can be used in a Whitelist by adding the domain name, preceded by an @ sign. For example, if you wanted to whitelist all email from addresses at domain.com, you would add "@domain.com" to your Whitelist.

Setting Filter Sensitivity:

To change the sensitivity of Spasm's spam filters, hit the Mail Filters button at the top of your screen. You'll be taken to the Mail Filters Settings page, where you can choose to set your filters to Off, Low, Medium, High, or All. You can also choose Custom, which affords a greater level of control over Spasm. Using the All setting is not recommended.

If you change your settings, hit the Update button to save the changes.

Using Blacklists:

By default, email from entries in the Blacklist will be quarantined. If you don't want email from entries in the Blacklist to be quarantined, but bounced back to the sender, change your filter settings to Custom and move the radio button next to PERSONAL_BLACKLIST from Quarantine to Reject.

Blocking domain names: The Blacklist can block all email from certain domains. For example, if you don't want to receive email from any Yahoo.com address, you can enter "yahoo.com" into the Blacklist.

Using the Quarantine:

Any messages caught by Spasm's filters will appear in your Quarantine so you can review them and, if a valid message is inadvertently quarantined, you can have the message delivered to your mailbox.

Messages caught by Spasm's antivirus filter will be displayed on a red background.

Using the "Quarantine Messages Expire In:" drop-down menu specifies how long Spasm will save undelivered messages before automatically removing them from the quarantine.

Four icons appear next to each quarantined message. Clicking on the icons performs the following action for that message:

• Displays the quarantined message
• Delivers the quarantined message
• Delivers the quarantined message and adds the sender address to the Whitelist
• Deletes the quarantined message

The drop-down menu at the top of the Spasm quarantine window can be used to perform these actions on more than one message at a time. Messages are selected using the check boxes to the left of each message.

When viewing a quarantined message, the top portion of a Quarantine entry will look something like this:

Sender: bzdpri@earthlink.net
Server: 24.51.143.209
Host: adelphia.net

From: "Jessie Pitts" ‹BZDPRI@earthlink.net›
To: email_address@SpiritOne.com
Subject: Hot Rocking Stocks, Today......ophiuchus
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 06:23:35 -0600

Above this, you will see buttons that will automatically allow you to perform certain actions with this message. Using these buttons, you can automatically whitelist or blacklist the sender address, host, or server. These buttons will add the information in the Sender, Server, and Host fields into your Blacklist or Whitelist. You can also choose to have the message delivered to your mailbox using the buttons at the top of the screen.

Using the View Full Headers button, you can find out exactly what spam filter caught the message. Just hit the button and look for the "X-spasm" header. You'll see something like, "SF_SORBS," which is the filter that caused the message to be quarantined.