Postini and/or Spam

I keep receiving the odd e-mail marked Spam despite originating from reliable sources. Some time ago I was asked to PM the message source from one such e-mail but have heard nothing, I didn�t keep a copy nor can I remember his name. The e-mail in question was a John Lewis newsletter (no I�m not an MP) which contained plenty of hyperlinks, all the other Spam marked e-mails also contained hyperlinks.

At the moment my Postini spam setting allows everything in and I rely on MailWasher and Norton 360.

Can anyone at PN or other throw any light on this please? It has only occurred since Postini was introduced. I use a domain supplied and hosted by PN.

At the moment we don't have an easy way to whitelist on a per user basis, however we are developing tools which will allow you great flexibility on the spam settings including your own whitelists and blacklists along with tweaking the aggressiveness of the spam filter. Here is a very basic overview of the changes we are looking to implement, blatantly copied from a post Bob made previously:-

* Ability to switch off Blatant Spam Blocking
* Ability to whitelist/blacklist domains/email addys
* Ability to tweak the sensitivity of the spam tagging filter
* Ability to switch on Postini's quarantine service and have a daily quarantine report emailed to you
* Ability to move mail to the Spam folder without marking the subject line with [-SPAM-]

Hopefully this will help you with the problems you've been seeing, once we get firm dates for this launching we'll let you know.

Thanks Chris.

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* Ability to switch off Blatant Spam Blocking
* Ability to whitelist/blacklist domains/email addys
* Ability to tweak the sensitivity of the spam tagging filter
* Ability to switch on Postini's quarantine service and have a daily quarantine report emailed to you
* Ability to move mail to the Spam folder without marking the subject line with [-SPAM-]

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The above is a very loose definition of what is proposed and it would be helpful if a fuller definition could be posted for discussion - on the PN support forum maybe?

What I would like is:
To switch off blatant spam *blocking* but still have an email identified - ideally in a Postini header - as blatant spam.

To switch off marking the subject header with [-SPAM-] but still have access to a Postini header line with a spam rating.

My mail client is perfectly capable of acting on rules contained in a Postini heading and sorting email appropriately and that way I could see what Postini is doing to *MY* email.

AFAIAC the PN Postini implementation is severely compromised by the inability to monitor what is being dropped. Absence of spam in my mailbox is not a measure of Postini efficiency since 100% could be achieved simply by turning off email entirely.

PN could only benefit from canvassing their customers on their requirements before proceeding with what could be another flawed rollout.

Cheers

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To switch off blatant spam *blocking* but still have an email identified - ideally in a Postini header - as blatant spam.

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-This will be possible, turning off BSB will allow this, the email will still pass through Postini but will not be dropped at the edge by them. You can then either use the [-SPAM-] tagging or the Postini headers to filter this.

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To switch off marking the subject header with [-SPAM-] but still have access to a Postini header line with a spam rating.

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- As the email still goes through Postini the headers will still be present if subject line tagging is turned off. This will allow you to filter on the headers.

Excellent! I look forward to going back on Postini once the implementation is completed.

Well done!

Regards

If you are happier doing your own filtering using the Postini headers, you could turn off the [-SPAM-] tagging today. I ran like that for a few weeks before they corrected the stupidities in the [-SPAM-] tagging rules.

That's right and I ran that way too until I realised the BSB would be dropping my mail with no means for me to monitor.

AFAIK the only way to escape that is to opt out of Postini.
(unless you know differently).

No I don't know differently!

The one option I would like is to have BSB turned on (which means rejected emails are bounced with an appropriate error code), but to have a daily report of the emails rejected. That way I wouldn't have to have BSB turned off with hundreds of emails quarantined and taking up space on the Postini servers. But I would still be able to spot anything that was wrong, whitelist and then contact the sender to send again if needed.

There hasn't been much (any?) information apart from what was quoted above.
I don't know if email rejected by the BSB (if enabled) will be quarantined but suspect not. Maybe I missed a BTW in discussion somewhere.

I would like to see more information published even down to telling us what Postini will send when rejecting our messages.

Maybe that will come in time. At present I imagine PN priority is to recover from the problems surrounding the implementation which seems as though it could have gone better.

I am happy to wait since I receive virtually no spam, others may not be so fortunate and need Postini to be sorted out quickly (but properly). I was warned off PN email before I migrated but decided to give it a go.

Nevertheless, overall am a happy customer and pleased with the deal so far. If PN don't get their email act together I can always use a 3rd party provider - but that would be extra cost and administration which would prefer to avoid. Putting it in perspective, the vast bulk of PN customers probably don't care if messages get thrown out with the bathwater as long as spam is reduced - or there would be more of a hue and cry!

I'm assuming that if we opt to turn BSB off and quarantining on, everything that was blocked would be quarantined.

That's the problem with assuming - you assume one thing and I assume another...


Hopefully PN will dispel the confusion in due course...

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There hasn't been much (any?) information apart from what was quoted above.
I don't know if email rejected by the BSB (if enabled) will be quarantined but suspect not. Maybe I missed a BTW in discussion somewhere.

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Email rejected by BSB is not quarantined and the emails blocked on this basis do not feature on any summary reports.

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I would like to see more information published even down to telling us what Postini will send when rejecting our messages.

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Blatant spam is rejected with a 571 server response. Messages to domains that don't exist in Postini's systems (or messages that Postini is unable to deliver) are rejected with a 554 server response. There are other rejection codes but these are by far the most common.

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I'm assuming that if we opt to turn BSB off and quarantining on, everything that was blocked would be quarantined.

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Yes jelv, that's how I understand it to work.


Kind Rgds,

Bob has!

Thanks Bob! Excellent response - so far...
So to get where I want to, one last question (for now):


IF I turn off BSB will I be able to tell WHAT messages BSB WOULD have blocked (had it been on) from the Postini header? i.e. is there a unique code (or codes) for BSB candidates (as opposed to other spam suspects).

What I want to do is get a feeling for the accuracy of the BSB before I turn it on,
Running for a period with BSB off and identifying messages that would have been intercepted by BSB would do that, plus at any time email went missing I could turn it off and do a test.

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IF I turn off BSB will I be able to tell WHAT messages BSB WOULD have blocked (had it been on) from the Postini header? i.e. is there a unique code (or codes) for BSB candidates (as opposed to other spam suspects).

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The key to that is in the following header:

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X-pstn-levels: (S: 0.43242/99.72055 R:95.9108 P:95.9108 M:97.0282 C:98.6951 )

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The highlighted value determines whether or not a message is considered blatant spam or not. I'm not too sure of the thresholds for this though. The info from Postini's site is here.

Rgds,

Thanks Bob, that link is the key to my question.
I'm happy now...