Q: How does the filtering service work?
A: A small change is made to your company's Domain Name Server
(DNS) settings that tells the internet's mail servers to deliver your
company's mail to our network of servers, so your mail flows through our
filtering network before being delivered to your current mail server.
(see How it works)
(top)
Q: What is the difference between a Managed Spam
Service, a Hosted Spam Service, and an Outsourced Spam Service?
A: None. They're just different names for the
same thing. This type of service is also called a Gateway Spam Service.
All of these terms describe a service where an outside company filters
your incoming email before it reaches your internal email server.
(top)
Q: What are the advantages of a Managed/Hosted/Outsourced/Gateway
Service? Are there other types of spam filtering?
A: See a discussion of this here.
(top)
Q: Is there a contract for the service?
A: No, the spam and filtering service is month-to-month and you can cancel at any
time. Billing is at the beginning of the month. You will be refunded
the unused amount if you chose to discontinue the service.
(top)
Q: How much does it cost?
A: The pricing for our Spam Blocker and Filtering Service is extremely competitive. Check it out here.
(top)
Q: Do I have to buy any software?
A: No. All you do is subscribe to our service. There is no
hardware or software to buy and nothing to install or maintain.
(top)
Q: Is your service more cost-effective than purchasing
the filtering software and hardware ourselves?
A: For small and mid-sized companies,
yes. Actually, even some very large companies prefer to outsource spam filtering instead of paying for maintenance, upkeep, and licensing fees (not
to mention personnel) themselves. The upfront costs are in the thousands
of dollars and the ongoing maintenance and licensing fees can be burdensome.
With our spam filtering service, all maintenance is done for you. We update our spam software
on a continual basis to ensure that your protection is always up to date.
Since spam and viruses are removed before they reach your network, you
benefit from increased bandwidth availability, and there's less load on
your email servers. For most small and mid-sized companies there really
is no better option.
(top)
Q: How effective is your spam filtering service?
A: Our system averages a 98.2% catch rate and
99.9% false-positive protection. Catch rate is the percentage of
spam email caught by an anti-spam solution. It measures the efficiency
of the filtering solution at identifying and stopping spam. A false positive is
when an anti-spam engine blocks a legitimate message by error, on assumption
that it is spam.
(top)
Q: Are there any set-up costs or hidden fees?
A: No. Just your monthly subscription fee.
(top)
Q: How do I get started?
A: Once you sign-up for our free trial,
we will configure our servers to start processing email on your
behalf. All that needs to happen on your end is the MX ("Mail Exchange")
record of your DNS ("Domain Name System") servers needs to be
changed. We can either show you how to do this or more likely we will
contact your internet service provider for you and give them the correct
information. Once this change is made, your email starts to
flow through our spam and virus filtering system, and you're protected. You can be up
and running in under one hour.
(top)
Q: Do I have to know anything about computers to
use your service?
A: No. There is no technical proficiency required. The whole idea
of an outsourced or hosted spam solution is that you shouldn't have to do anything.
We will, however, need to talk to the company or person hosting your domain,
but that's it. As long as you have that company's or person's phone
number, that's all we need.
(top)
Q: How long does it take to get started?
A: In as little as one hour. Our setup process is incredibly
simple and was designed to get business up and running the same day. (see
getting started)
(top)
Q: How does the setup work?
A: When you sign up for the free trial of our spam blocker and filtering service, we will contact the company
where your domain is hosted. They will probably ask you for permission
to change some settings (your domain's MX record)and after that your spam filtering
is enabled. It may take a little while for those changes to fully propagate
through the internet, but you should to begin to notice a difference almost
immediately.
(top)
Q: Are there any requirements for using your service?
A: Only that you have a domain. Your domain is everything that
comes after the “@” in your email address. For example, the
domain for you@yourcompany.com is “yourcompany.com”. It does
not matter what mail system you are using or whether you host it at your
company or with an ISP.
(top)
Q: What type of mail servers do you support?
A: All of them. Our service is platform independent. There
are no downloads and nothing to install. It doesn't matter if your
servers are Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac or anything else. We work perfectly with Microsoft Exchange and Outlook. As long as you
have your own domain name, you can fully use our spam an virus filtering service.
(top)
Q: Which Email programs can I use?
A: Any. Our service is software independent and blocks spam on email
program like Eudora, Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape etc.
(top)
Q: Why don’t you support personal e-mail
accounts like Yahoo and Hotmail?
A: Our service works by routing all of your incoming email through
our servers. This is achieved by making a change to your domain's MX record,
which tells everyone where your mail should be delivered. Yahoo,
Hotmail, etc. will not change their MX records to accommodate individual
users. If you have an email account at one of these companies and would
like to setup your own domain and email (you@yourcompany.com) we can help.
Contact us to learn more.
(top)
Q: Can I use your service if I don't run my own
mail server (I pay someone else to do it)?
A: Yes. As long as you have your own domain name, you can take
full advantage of our spam blocker and filtering service.
(top)
Q: Do I need to inform my ISP that I'm using your
service?
A: No. Other than switching your MX record you don't need to contact
your ISP about the use of our spam service. It does not impact them at
all.
(top)
Q: What do I tell my ISP or mailbox hosting company
to do in order to change the MX record?
A: Actually we can talk to them for you, we just need the contact
information. We will provide you with documentation of exactly what
changes were made so you will have a complete record in
case you ever decide to cancel our filtering service.
(top)
Q: What if my domain name is hosted by somebody
else?
A: Thats ok, most of them are. It doesn't matter who is hosting
your domain. We will work with any and all ISPs or hosting services to
get you set up and blocking spam quickly.
(top)
Q: Will there be any delay in receiving my messages?
A: About 1 second. Even under peak traffic loads the time it takes
to run our battery of tests on your incoming email and filter out spam
and viruses is typically only about one second.
(top)
Q: Does your system read my email?
A: No. Absolutely not. Be assured, our spam blocker and filtering system does not read, copy, distribute,
tamper with, change or otherwise interfere or observe your email beyond
our filtering for spam, viruses, and unwanted content (attachments, etc) defined by you.
(top)
Q: Can I whitelist / blacklist people?
A: Yes, each user of our spam blocker service has control over their own whitelists and blacklists. Company-wide filter settings can also be implemented.
(top)
Q: How many users can you support?
A: As many as you got. We maintain a series of high-end servers
utilizing the latest, most advanced hardware. We also use the largest,
most reliable data pipes available to assure our subscribers fast, uninterrupted
spam filtering and blocking service.
(top)
Q: What happens to email identified as spam?
A: By default spam is quarantined on our servers for five days before
it is permanently deleted. You will receive daily spam quarantine reports telling
you what was caught and you have the option of releasing any message from
quarantine at any time. You can also check your quarantined messages
in real time just by logging in here.
Keep in mind that these are the default filtering settings only - almost everything
is customizable. You can have any or all spam instantly deleted, or you
can have it delivered with a modified subject line or an additional email
header. You can even choose to filter out highly spammy or obscene email,
while tagging and delivering email that has few spam characteristics.
You can also choose how often you receive quarantine reports and how long
a spam message stays in quarantine before being deleted. Most customers
find the default filter settings to work very well, but the choice is yours.
(top)
Q: How do I manage my account settings?
A: Log in here to manage the spam filtering settings.
(top)
Q: How do I customize these settings?
A: It's pretty self-explanitory. You can make changes to your spam blocker settings at any time and as often as you like.
Simply log into your account.
(top)
Q: What is the mail size limit? How about attachments?
A: There are no size limits for email or attachments.
(top)
Q: What happens if I change my ISP (Internet Service
Provider)?
A: Just let us know. As long as there is no change to your
MX record everything should be fine. Contact us though and we'll
make sure everything goes smoothly.
(top)
Q: What about the mail I send? Does that get filtered
too?
A: No. There is no change to your outgoing mail. Everything
will operate the same as it does now.
(top)
Q: Does someone sending me a message know I'm using
a spam filter?
A: No. Our spam filter operated in the background and is transparent
to senders. They will notice no difference.
(top)
Q: Will I still receive attachments?
A: Of course. However any attachments that contain viruses will
be quarantined.
(top)
Q: Will this affect my wireless email service?
A: No. Our spam filtering service has no effect on your BlackBerry or
any other wireless email devices.
(top)
Q: Can we still access our email through our web
based system?
A: Yes, you can continue to access your email via a web based system.
Our spam filtering system does not affect this at all.
(top)
Q: What assurance do I have that you will safeguard
my personal information.
A: Your personal information is treated with the strictest of confidence,
our privacy policy is rigorously adhered to.
No one at our company has access to any of your mail as it passes through
our spam blocker and filtering system and we retain no record of that mail except for your spam quarantine
report, which you have full access to and control over. The only
time we would ever retain your email would be if your server were to go
down and your mail was undeliverable. In this case we would hold
all incoming email messages temporarily until you were up and running
and then deliver them to you. Once delivered, all traces
of these messages would be automatically removed from our servers.
(top)
Q: Is my email confidential?
A: Using our spam blocker and filtering service does not make your email messages any less
secure or any more secure than they are now. Keep in mind that internet
email is inherently insecure - it travels over public networks and through
multiple servers on its way from source to destination. We don't store
your email (except in some cases as an emergency backup - see below).
During the 1 second or so it takes to filter your email for spam and viruses there is no access
to those messages by our staff. The only pieces of information retained
after your mail has been delivered are log files showing the server connections. Our secure servers just filter incoming email
and then pass it on to it's final destination. Because there is no record
or copy of your emails on our servers, except for your quarantined spam,
there is very little chance of any security compromise.
(top)
Q: My email passes through your servers, is that safe?
A: Some potential clients have expressed concern
about their email passing through our unknown servers. Our filtering process does not make your email any more or less secure than it is now. It is important
to keep in mind that very few email messages actually
travel directly from the sending server to the receiving server. Most email messages
pass through several layers of outside servers on their way to their final
destinations. Email traffic is inherently insecure. Most of the time you have
no idea where your email has been or how many servers have had access to it. It is very likely that we will be the most secure link in your email delivery route.
(top)
Q: How does the emergency backup work?
A: Emergency backup is part of our standard service and is extremely
popular with our existing customers. Basically, if your email server
goes down we'll automatically hold all of your incoming email until you
are back online (up to a couple of days - more if you contact us).
When our system sees that your server is back up and running, it will
deliver all waiting mail to you. This all but eliminates
any 'undeliverable' message errors that senders might receive during power outages
or system crashes or any other downtime. As your mail is delivered
it is deleted from our system. We do not retain any copy or record of
your email.
(top)
Q: Is it possible to lose email while switching
to your service?
A: No. Changing the MX record is a simple process and there is
no downtime. All email will begin to route through our system with no apparent
change in the delivery.
(top)
Q: Can your service make my email server more secure?
A: Yes, here's how:
By using our service you effectively cloak your corporate mail server
from the Internet and only accept inbound email from our servers. This
prevents vulnerabilities from being exploited on your mail server and
reduce the exposure to a possible security incident.
Because your corporate mail server will not be exposed to the Internet
for SMTP traffic you will no longer be susceptible to Directory Harvest
Attacks and Dictionary Attacks which are used to collect the valid email
addressed in your mail directory. In addition, preventing these types
of attacks will save processing power on your mail server.
(top)
Q: Why can’t my firewall stop spam or Directory
Harvest Attacks?
A: Corporate firewalls offer little or no protection against spam
or Directory Harvest Attacks or Dictionary Attacks. Inbound email often passes through the firewall
to your email server without regard for message content, message size
or address, creating an opportunity for spam and viruses to enter and
making your email system vulnerable to directory harvesting.
(top)
Q: What is a MX record?
A: MX ("Mail Exchange") record is used to route email.
It tells sites on the Internet where your mail should be sent. A sender's
mail server uses the global DNS system to look up the hostname of the
appropriate recipient mail server. Basically it tells everyone on the
internet "Deliver my email to this specific computer".
(top)
Q: What is a DNS server?
A: A DNS Server is a computer that contains specialized
information about a particular domain (or domains) and is connected to
the global DNS system. Of the many types of information it may contain,
most importantly it provides a physical location (IP address) for each
domain name, and lists the mail exchange servers accepting e-mail for
each domain.
The DNS provides a vital service on the Internet as it allows the transmission
of technical information in a user-friendly way. While computers and network
hardware work with IP addresses to perform tasks such as addressing and
routing, humans generally find it easier to work with hostnames and domain
names in URLs and e-mail addresses. The DNS therefore mediates between
the needs and preferences of humans and of software.
The DNS system is, in fact, its own network. If one DNS server doesn't
know how to translate a particular domain name, it asks another one, and
so on, until the correct IP address is returned.
(top)
Q: What is a Directory Harvest Attack, DHA?
A: A Directory Harvest Attack (DHA) is a sophisticated technique
that spammers use to bypass typical email server checking mechanisms in
order to access directories and receive a list of valid email addresses.
During a DHA, spammers attempt to deliver messages to multiple addresses,
such as john@yourcompany.com, jane@yourcompany.com, or mary@yourcompany.com.
Addresses that are not rejected by the receiving mail server are determined
as valid. These addresses are compiled and sold to other spammers worldwide.
This is why a brand new email box can be full of unsolicited junk email
just hours after it has been set-up. Our service protects against Directory
Harvest Attacks.
(top)
