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Troubleshooting

Spam Getting Through - Reporting suspected spam

Question:
I have Email Protection configured but spam messages continue to come through. How can I stop these messages from being delivered or report the spam?

Answer:
There are a number of reasons that a message considered to be spam might be received by a user. Among these are configuration settings in the Email Protection Service allowing the message to pass through and messages that may not score high enough to be considered spam by our filters.

If you look at the internet header and see the line X-Spam:Exempt, then the user is exempt from filtering due to one of the following reasons:

  1. The sender's domain, email address or IP address is on the policy level allow list.
  2. The sender's domain, email address or IP address has been added to the recipient’s user level allow list.
  3. The user is exempted from filtering.

Messages that contain an opt-out or unsubscribe link will typically be scored lower under the assumption that the recipient subscribed directly or indirectly (via business relationship) to the messages. Customers moving to the Email Protection service will sometimes see an increase in this type of message after switching from another spam filtering service. Users should be encouraged to unsubscribe from these messages if they are not wanted.

In other cases, a message may not score high enough to be quarantined or denied.

We recommend adding to your deny list any e-mail or IP address that sends unwanted messages to your domain. Please note that narrow allow-list entries will take precedence over broad deny-list entries. This means that you could potentially add "*@gmail.com" to your deny list, while maintaining a list of authorized GMail addresses on your allow list.

Access the Spam and Virus Control Center

Access to the Spam and Virus Control Center can be found here

SpamControl/SpamBlock FAQ

Getting started

Sign into the Control Console
The Control Console is the primary user interface with which you manage your quarantined email.

  1. Open a browser on your computer and enter the URL for the Control Console: https://spamcontrol.primus.ca/
  2. Enter your email address and password

    Caution: If you make five consecutive unsuccessful attempts to log in within a 30-minute period, your account is locked. In this case, you can wait 30 minutes and try to log in again.
  3. Click the bar Click to open your spam control console. The Continuity page of the Control Console is displayed.

Manage email filters and quarantine reporting
To ensure spammers cannot bypass our system and deliver mail directly to you, the Spam filtering is disabled at the user-level. The application’s intelligence automatically filters spam emails.

Quarantine reports are email to you periodically. To make changes to the email address where reports are send.

  1. Click on the Quarantine Reports on the left sidebar.
  2. Un-check the Use Customer Level Settings check box.
  3. Type the email address you want to have quarantine email sent to into the Delegate to box.
  4. Click Save.

Allowing or denying email from senders
You can define lists of senders whose email addresses and/or domain either will always be accepted without spam filtering (Allow List) or will never be accepted for delivery (Deny List).

Types of spam to block
Two basic definitions of spam can help you determine whether a sender address and/or domain should be added to the Deny List.

  • Unwanted emails received from recognized senders — For example, a salesperson for a company may be sending you unwanted emails. In this scenario, it is unlikely that the sender will change often by the spammer, so this type of address is a good candidate to be added to Deny List.
  • Unwanted emails containing questionable or offensive content sent by senders deliberately attempting to bypass blacklisting and content filtering rules — For example, emails from a sender might contain a fraudulent money-making offer or offensive sexual content. In this scenario, these spammers often change their email addresses, email content, etc., in an attempt to bypass any blacklist filtering. This type of address is not a good candidate to be added to the Deny List because the denial is effective for only a brief time.

Email that contains viruses, attachment violations, or content violations might also be denied or quarantined based on those violations, regardless of your allow list. Also, emails that have been quarantined by Email Protection might not need to be added to Deny List because they are already being blocked from entering your email network.

Quarantined Messages

Quarantined Messages page
To see a list of quarantined emails you can click on the Messages tab on the left sidebar of the page. The Message Logs window lists all of the quarantined spam messages for the account of the user currently logged on.

Quarantined Messages option definitions
Option Definition
Refresh Update the quarantine message list to show the most recent number of emails matching the selected criteria
Email Reply Reply the mail to the sender
Release Release the email from spam to your inbox
Allow Sender Adds the sender email address to your Allow List
Deny Sender Adds the sender email address to your Deny List
Report Spam Report the email as spam an d allowing you to tag the reason
Inbound Emails originate from sender
Outbound Emails originate from you
Export Sends the list of emails to a CSV (comma-separated) file for download
Columns Select the addition detail information of quarantined messages

Allowed or Deny Senders
You can define lists of senders whose email addresses are always accepted without spam filtering (Allow List), or senders whose email addresses will never be accepted for delivery (Deny List).

Note: User should not exceed 200 entries of email addresses and/or domain names in their Allow List or Deny List.

Note: A common spamming technique is to change the sender email address often or even hijack a user's email address to send spam. The Deny List might not prevent future spam emails from these spammers. The Deny List primarily use is to block emails from unwanted senders who consistently send from the same address (for example, unwanted sales emails from a known company).

You can easily add senders to your Allow List or Deny List. In the Message Logs check the emails you want to add to your Allow List, then click on the Allow Sender tab on the top. To add to the Deny List, then click on the Deny List tab on the top.

Manually Adding Sender to Allow List or Deny List

  1. Click on the tab Allow & Deny, click on Allow List or Deny List on the left sidebar.
  2. For each domain or sender you want to add, perform these steps:
    1. In the Sender or Domain, enter a sender address. The following values are allowed in list entries:
      • Domain Name — Qualified domain name (for example, xyz.com) or subdomains (for example, *@*.xyz.com) allows emails from any subdomain of the XYZ domain, such as "user@abc.xyz.com"). If you want to allow all emails from this domain, then use this option instead of typing in each email address associated with the domain
      • Sender Address — Complete email address (for example, "user@xyz.com") or partial address (for example, user*@xyz.com or *@xyz.com)
    2. Click Add.

Upload a list of senders
You can create a file containing a list of senders and then upload that list to the sender’s page.

Before you begin
The predefined list must be in the following format:

  • Text or .csv (Excel) file
  • One entry per line (domain name or email address)
  • File must be available for your browser to access

Each entry in the list can include any of the following:

  • Domain Name - qualified domain name (for example, xyz.com) or subdomains (for example, *@*.xyz.com allows emails from any subdomain of the XYZ domain, such as "user@abc.xyz.com"). If you know you want to allow all emails from this domain, then use this option instead of typing in each email address associated with the domain.
  • Sender Address - complete email address (for example, "user@xyz.com") or partial address (for example, user*@xyz.com or *@xyz.com).

The same address cannot be added multiple times in the same list. Any email addresses or domain names that violate this rule are discarded automatically.

The Allow List overrides the Deny List. For example, if you designate a range of email addresses (for example, by designating an entire domain) in the Deny List, but then designate a single email address from that domain in the Allow List, the email from that single address will always be accepted while the email from any other address in the domain in the Deny List will always be denied.

  1. Create the file with the list of senders. You need a separate file for each list.
  2. Click on the tab Allow & Deny, click on Allow List or Deny List on the left sidebar.
  3. Click Import for the top.
  4. Browse or drag you file by clicking on the + sign, find the file on your computer and click Open.

Remove senders from list
You can remove senders from the allowed senders or blocked sender’s lists.

  1. Click on the tab Allow & Deny, click on Allow List or Deny List on the left sidebar.
  2. For each sender you want to remove from the list, select the checkbox.
  3. Click Delete on the top.