Spam Email Filtering Service

> How it works
> How to use it
> Avoiding incorrectly tagged messages
> How to disable the service

How it works

Our "spam" (Unsolicited Commercial Email, or UCE) tagging service is available as an option to help you identify junk e-mail as you receive it. We use a scanning program named Spam Assassin which can process an e-mail message and assign a numeric "spam level" ranking to it based on a wide variety of criteria. Each message is run through a barrage of tests to determine its "spamminess" and assign it a score. Once a message's score exceeds a pre-set threshold, the message is considered spam.

If a message is considered to be junk mail, it is tagged, or marked, in several ways. The most obvious is that the prefix of '[[ SPAM ]]' is prepended to the subject line of the e-mail. A report is also included in the headers of the e-mail which gives a brief explanation of the various tests which matched the message and contributed to the final "spam score."

There are several hundred tests performed each time a message goes through the process. They include things like checking technical validity of header information, checking content for known spam phrases/links/tricks, checking online databases for known spam gateways the message may have gone through, and an intelligent classifier tool which automatically learns what messages "look" like spam and which don't (this is called the Bayesian classifier). For the most part there is no single test which definitely identifies spam, but instead multiple factors contribute to the total score which makes the tool highly accurate.

It should be noted that while the program is very accurate, it is not 100% accurate. This means you may occasionally get legitimate mail tagged as spam, as well as spam which doesn't get caught. For this reason it is a good idea to occasionally review suspected spam for any real messages.

How to use it

Spam tagging can be enabled on a per-domain or per-user basis. If you're not sure how to do this, please contact the administrator of your domain or us at support@WorldDesign.com. Once spam tagging is enabled, all suspected junk mail sent to you will be altered as described above. At this point you have a few choices in how you want to deal with the tagged messages.

A) The simplest method is to do nothing and just skip over messages with '[[ SPAM ]]' in the subject line when reading your mail. You can usually sort your message listing by subject so that all tagged spam is grouped together for easy deletion.

B) If your e-mail program supports sorting messages into separate mailboxes, then you could make a new folder (called 'spam' for example) and direct all suspected junk mail into this folder for later examination and deletion. This is typically done by setting up a "filter" in your e-mail program settings. For example the filter can be set so that any message with '[[ SPAM ]]' in the Subject would be directed to the spam folder. You may also use this technique to direct suspected junk mail directly to a Trash folder if your e-mail program uses one.

C) You can have all spam go to a special Spam folder on the server so you never see it in your inbox. You can check this folder via webmail, or use the IMAP protocol for checking your mail (IMAP supports multiple folders on the server; IMAP is an add-on service of WDG Mail). To have WDG Mail automatically place suspected spam in your account's Spam folder, in webmail go to Tools > Options > Security > Spam, and change the Spam Folder Mode to "Use Spam Folder." Please note that if you use POP to retrieve your mail (vs. IMAP), you will not get the contents of the Spam folder delivered to you automatically.

Avoiding incorrectly tagged messages

Please see the "Blacklists and Whitelists" section on our mail features page.

How to disable the service

We do not recommend this, but you can disable spam tagging altogether in the e-mail control panel. Log into the webmail interface at http://www.wdg.us/ using your e-mail address and password, then select Options, the Security tab, then the Anti-Spam tab, and un-check the box next to "Anti-Spam." Click OK, at the bottom, to save your settings.