Spam and Virus Protection
Spam and viruses have become one of the biggest problems on the internet and cost business £1000’s each day. They waste time, bandwidth, expose you to fraud and can even damage your computer systems. For this reason, Digital Forest servers now run a spam and virus protection system called Mail Guard.
This system enables on average 98% of spam and all viruses to be filtered out of your incoming mail so they never get to your computer or they tagged so they can be filtered out using your e-mail client.
Features
Mail Guard has many features to protect you from spam and viruses on the internet, below are details on how the system can identify spam and viruses to protect you.
Heuristics Spam Detection Engine - Our spam detection system uses some of the most advanced rules to determine if an e-mail message is spam. Unlike most systems that just look for keywords to identify spam, Mailgaurd checks many parts of the e-mail using it's own special set of tests. Each test giving the message a score which are then added together at the end and messages with a high enough total score will be classed as spam.
This system is far more advanced than other systems and from our tests has one of the lowest rates of false positives. This is very important as many other system fall down as they block a lot of genuine e-mail.
Checksum Databases – Calculating check sums of mail you receive allows us to compare it with multiple databases of confirmed spam messages. These databases contain check sums of mail that other users have already identified as spam and reported. This is one of the best ways of recognising a spam message as most will have already been report as spam so our system will know its spam.
Virus Scanner - Mail is also virus scanned to check it doesn’t contain viruses and is deleted if a virus is detected. Our system is always right up to date with all the latest virus definitions, updating many times throughout the day. It can also scan for viruses hidden in zip and other compressed files so can be relied upon to protect you.
Intelligent white listing system – This stops any genuine mail which under very rare circumstances might be blocked. If this did happen and you have selected to have the mail bounced back, the sender will be given the option to add themselves to a white list. This will then allow them to resend their message and prevent it from being blocked. What makes this system very special is the way it works to prevent spammers from adding their addresses and allows the send to instantly resend their message.
- Genuine e-mail is sent to you but our system blocks it as it believes its spam.
- An e-mail is sent to this person telling them that this has happened and offering them the chance to be added to our white list so they can resend the message.
- They follow a link in the bounced message which takes them to our white listing system where they can enter their details.
- An e-mail will then be sent to them with a link they must click on which shows that they are sending from address they have access. This is what prevents spammers from using the system as they rarely use a genuine e-mail addresses so would not be able to complete the white list signup.
Article Date: 13th September 2005 |
