ANTI SPAM FILTERING - HOW WE STOP SPAM

 

Remote Anti Spam scans in 3 phases to block spam, phishing, spyware and viruses entering your network.

Our dedicated email anti spam specialists work around the clock updating spam rules and virus signatures

All messages entering our datacentres are scanned using McAfee, ClamAV and AVG anti virus technologies and checked against trusted anti spam & phishing signature databases.

Our 3 stage process detects up to 99% of spam without losing legitimate messages

 

 

 

PHASE 1

DNSBL LOOKUPS

Incoming messages are checked against internet blacklists which list the addresses of email servers and compromised systems known to send huge volumes of spam. If a message being sent to your domain originates from a server on one of these blacklists, the message is rejected and the spam never gets near your network.

 

PHASE 2

SURBL LOOKUPS

Messages which get past phase 1 are checked for links to web sites advertised by known spam gangs. Most spam messages contain a link to a web site where a service or product is being "spamvertised" for sale.

These web sites are tracked and listed in another type of blacklist called URIBL or SURBL. Messages containing links to these known spam web sites are also rejected and again the spam blocked. These messages also never get to your network.

 

PHASE 3

CONTENT FILTER SCAN

The content filter is a database of known spam and phishing phrases, techniques and characteristics which is updated several times a day.

The majority of messages remaining at this stage should be legitimate email, however there will inevitably be some remaining spam.

To prevent legitimate messages being blocked we do not reject messages which fail the content filter phase.

Messages are scored depending on how many content filter rules they breach and then fall into one of two categories.

 

1.
HAM Messages with no spam score or a very low spam score are delivered without any modification
 

2.

SPAM Messages which have received a high spam score are tagged as spam and delivered to your email server.
 

 

An up-to-date business email package such as Microsoft Outlook 2003 is able to read the email header information which contains the spam tag, and diverts tagged messages to the user's Junk E-mail folder.