Spam filtering with Baruwa

This article applies to domain-based email on our current hosting platform. (Not sure which platform you're on? Start here.)

Agathon uses Baruwa, an enterprise-level spam and virus filtering service. We provide it as an optional add-on to your email hosted with Agathon.

The following overview is intended to help get you started. There is plenty more you can explore within the interface. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask!

Accessing Your Filtering Account

You can login to the filtering interface using your full email address as the Username, and your current email password.

To view your spam quarantine, go to Messages → Quarantine and click the green Spam button in the upper-right.

You’ll notice the Full Message List and the Quarantine appear to be very similar. The quarantine lets you take action on what you’re seeing, however, and offers shortcuts for viewing Spam or Not Spam only (the green buttons in the upper-right).

Note: When using filters to search for messages, keep in mind the filters persist across actions until you manually clear them.

Dealing With Spam

To learn why a message was quarantined, click on the message in the list. That will bring you to a Message Details screen. Scroll down to the Spam Checks Results section showing a breakdown of the message scoring.

To learn why a message was not quarantined, find the message under Messages → Full Message List. The listing will show each message’s spam score, color-coded based on status.

• Spam: The message’s score indicated it was either likely or definitely spam, and has been quarantined.
• Clean: The message’s score indicated it was not spam, and therefore was subsequently delivered.
• AS: The message came from an Approved Sender for the domain or account, and was delivered regardless of its spam score.
• NS: The message was Not Scored (e.g., daily quarantine report sent from Baruwa).

If you receive spam that should have been quarantined but was delivered instead, you have the ability to help the system learn. (This is completely optional.) To do so:

• Login to the interface and go to Messages.
• From there, you can search for the message that made it through.
• Click on it, and scroll down to the Quarantine section.
• Check the box next to Bayesian Learn, select Spam from the drop-down, and click Submit.

That educates the filtering to know that should have been marked as spam, and means you no longer need to report spam messages to us.

Note: Even though you’ve flagged the message as spam, the original copy of that message will remain in the quarantine.

Quarantine Reports

By default, all users will receive daily quarantine email reports. This is an email message showing new messages added to your quarantine since the last report was sent (maximum of 25 messages displayed in the report).

You can disable this report, if you’d like, by going to Account → Update account. Uncheck Send reports, and click the Update Account button.

Spam Scoring

Every email message for a filtered account will be scored based on numerous criteria, and the resulting score determines whether or not the message is considered spam. The default spam scoring thresholds are:

The scoring thresholds can be changed at the Domain or Account level: Account → Update account. A setting of 0.0 for either the Domain or an Account means to use the system-level definitions.

Domain Administration

All email addresses within the domain will be scanned. As such, it’s important that every user has an account. This will enable them to receive quarantine reports, notifying them of any messages flagged as spam. It also allows them to opt-out of the spam checks for their address(es), if they so desire.

If there are any alias addresses within your domain, you can associate them with an account:

• Go to Accounts.
• Click on the primary email address.
• Click ‘Add alias address’.
• Add the alias email address, and select ‘Enabled’.

This allows that account to manage all email for that alias address.

Miscellaneous Features

Baruwa provides some additional features you may find helpful:

• You can re-classify Clean messages as Spam to help train the Bayesian filter.
• You can run email reports across a number of criteria (e.g., top senders to your addresses, spam score metrics).
• The quarantine report frequency is global. It is sent out at 4:00AM according to the time zone setting in your account.
• Users can add specific email addresses or domains to their own approved/banned senders lists. Anything on the approved list will automatically bypass any spam filtering.