Special Extended Article: Everything You Need To Know About Our Spam Blocking System

This month, we have decided to include a complete guide to our entire spam blocking system. We will include an explanation of the 2 spam blocking programs that we currently use and how they work, information about how to set up your own spam filters on our server, details about accessing your personal spam folder, and much more. We are aware that this is an extremely long article, but please take the time to read it because you will find a lot of useful info.

Our 2 Anti-Spam Programs:

We use 2 of the most trusted and complete spam filtering systems in the digital world today. Our first system is called Declude. You may know this program as "Pristine Mail". Declude has a main file that includes several tests that we have installed to examine email headers for known spam content. Email headers are the lines at the top of an email message that are used by servers on the Internet as they deliver the message. Your email program normally shows you only the standard To:, From:, Subject:, and Date: headers, but there are more. The most important header when you want to discuss spam is the Received: header, which tells you the route the message took when it was sent to you.
Spam Headers are a type of email header that come from known spammers or spam sources on the internet.
Besides the main file that includes which tests to use, Declude also has 4 different configuration files which tells the system what to do with the email messages if they fail one of the spam tests in the main file. If you have Pristine Mail installed on your email account, it is placed on one of these 4 levels. The 1st level which we call "lowjunk" will simply "tag" most of the spam email as spam, but it will deliver it to your inbox with a note for you in the subject to let you know which test has flagged it. Our 2nd and most common level is called "mediumjunk". At this level, if the email fails certain tests it will be flagged as spam and delivered to your inbox just as level 1, BUT if it fails certain other tests in the main file, it is marked with a special header by our system and sent to your spam folder on our server. Our 3rd level of filtering is called "strongjunk". At this level, more spam is sent to the spam folder because the configuration on this level is set to mark more spam with our special header that sends it to the spam folder. So, unlike level 2 more spam will be sent to the spam folder because the config file is set to block more spam from actually being sent to your inbox. Our last and final level is called "extremejunk". On this level, all messages tha fail even one of the tests in the main file are considered to be spam and are flagged fwith our special header to be sent to the spam folder. We try not to set any account on this level because as you may be already aware, some "good" mail can be sent to the spam folder. This is because what is spam to you may not necessarily be spam to someone else.  Most of our customers that sign up for Pristine Mail are placed on level 2 for starters. If level 2 is not enough, we can increase the level. In rare cases we are able to set up a custom made level for a customer. If you do not have Pristine Mail and wish to sign up for it, there is a one-time setup fee of $7.50+tax which we can add to your next bill. After the setup fee, there are no additional charges. We will even change your level free of charge if needed. Pristine Mail also comes with our anti-virus scanning program for your email address at no extra charge. One of the best features of Pristine Mail is that you don't have to do anything on your computer to set it up. Complete set up is done here on our server. You can't beat that!  Click Here to send an email to our billing dept. if you wish to sign up. Our 2nd Anti-Spam program is called simply that "Anti-Spam". This program is integrated into our mail server software. Anti-Spam works in a very different way than Declude does. Anti-Spam filters spam in 3 different ways. It uses an "anti-spam table", "phrase-list" and a "url-blacklist". The anti-spam table contains a list of words and the number of times each word was found in good email .vs spam email. Each word of the email is scanned against the list of words in the anti-spam table and each word gets a score depending on how often it is used as a spam word. If the total score of all words combined equals anywhere between 0.8-0.99, the message is considered spam. It is then tagged with our special header and sent to the spam folder. As for the phrase-list, here is how it works. The phrase-list contains thousands of phrases that are usually found in only spam mail. Each email is checked for these certain phrases and if it contains one, it is tagged iwith our special header and sent to the spam folder. Our url-blacklist contains a list of thousands of domain names and IP addresses of known spam sources. All emails are scanned by our blacklist and if they come from a known spam source they are tagged and sent to the spam folder. There is no charge for Anti-Spam. It is included free as part of your email service and we have it set up on all email addresses and domains.

"I Have Good Mail Going Into My Spam Folder!"

We know that this is a common concern for a lot of our customers. We also know that you are wondering why this happens and what can be done to prevent it. Well, the reason why it happens is quite simple. As I have stated above, what is spam to one person may not be thought of as spam for another person. For example, if I kept getting newsletters about a receipe club, I would consider that as spam, but there are a lot of folks out there that WANT newsletters from these types of clubs. Another example would be this... if I kept getting emails about airline ticket specials, I may WANT to get these emails and on the other hand you may NOT want emails like this. The bottom line is this... no spam filtering program can trap all of the spam all of the time. Our programs do the absolute best that they can do to help filter out the bad stuff and keep the good stuff. There is however some things that you can do yourself to help keep the bad mail in the spam folder and the good mail in your inbox. Read on...