Spam Protection Advanced Guide

This is our guide to the advanced features of the PlusNet mail platform and antispam features.

Use this guide to find out how the more advanced options available to you work.

1. Edge Protection
2. The Postini Quarantine System
3. Using The Postini Quarantine System

Edge Protection

Edge Protection (also called Blatant Spam Blocking) is a feature which will automatically block the most obvious spam email. Currently over half of all spam messages sent to our network are detected at this stage.

It is called Edge Protection because the filtering is performed at the edge of the network, before running through our internal filters.

Messages that are sent to your account are first filtered by our security partner Postini. Special headers are added to each message based on the number of spam characteristics it exhibits.

The email is then checked against the Edge Protection filters. If the Edge protection filters are confident a message is spam then it is rejected with a '571 Message Refused' error.

Switching Edge Protection off is not recommended as it can greatly increase the volume of spam sent to your mailbox. Occasionally you may find that legitimate email sent to your address will be returned to the sender with a server 571 error. If this does happen then we suggest that you whitelist the sender as opposed to switching off Edge Protection. You can see information on how to do this in our Spam Protection Guide.

Note: Due to the way that the Edge Protection system works, any messages determined to be spam will be rejected before they are delivered to your mailbox, meaning that you will never see such messages.

Switching spam filtering off does not disable Edge Protection, this needs to be switched off separately using the Manage My Mail controls.
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The Postini Quarantine System

The Quarantine setting uses the anti-spam filters of our security partner Postini to filter and manage your messages.

You will need to log into the Postini Quarantine system in order to view any messages which have been determined to be spam.

Each email domain will have its own quarantine login, regardless of how many mailboxes you are using.

Please also note that because of the way that the Quarantine system works, messages can be shown for email addresses which do not exist on your domain. If you should choose to have these delivered, they will then be deleted as the address doesn't exist.

Once logged into your quarantine area, you will be presented with a list of messages that Postini has identified as spam. Should you find any valid messages amongst this list then you can release them from the quarantine so they are delivered to their intended recipient. (This is particularly useful if you have children or younger members of the family who you wish to protect from offensive or pornographic spam email).

Note: Any emails that have been blocked by the Edge Protection system will not be viewable using the Quarantine system.
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Using The Postini Quarantine System

Go to the Quarantine system website, https://login.postini.com/

Enter your login name, which will be postini.default@your.domain, where your.domain is the email domain you are wanting to check mail for. For your PlusNet account, this will be in the format username.plus.com.

The password is the same as your main account password. (Also note that if you change the main account password on your PlusNet account, the password will also be updated to access the Postini Quarantine system.)

Once logged in, you will see the main Quarantine system:

There are four tabs which you can use:

Junk:

The Junk tab shows you messages which the spam filters have determined to be spam:

You can select multiple messages (1) and then opt to delete them (2) or deliver them (3).

You can opt to delete these messages, which will move them into the Trash folder.

You can also click on the subject line of a particular message to see the message itself (4).

Finally, you can click the deliver option (5), this will send the message through to its intended recipient. If you choose this option, you will see a confirmation screen like this:

Viruses:

The Virus tab shows you messages which the virus filters have determined to be viruses:

As with the Junk tab, you can choose to delete the messages, view them or have them delivered to their intended recipients.

Delivered:

The Delivered tab shows you messages which you have chosen to release from either the Junk or Virus folders:

You can see which messages you have delivered for a period of 3 days. You can also choose to re-deliver one or more messages.

Trash:

The Trash tab allows you to see messages in the Quarantine system which you have chosen to delete. If you accidentally delete a message, you can still choose to have it delivered by going into the Trash tab and moving it from there using the options shown for the Junk folder:

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This page last updated 16th May 2008

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