Adding addresses to the spam filters “Allow List”

Log into the McAffee Contol Console

Your login here will be your email address and, most likely, your email password….

If your email password doesn’t work, click the Forgot your password or need to create a password? link.

Click Email Protection -> Policies

This is where you make changes to the policies that affect your incoming and outgoing mail.

You may see more than one Inbound Policy, but the one to edit is the Default Inbound.

Then click the Allow/Deny tab, and then Sender Allow.

Enter the domain, the full email address, or some letters in the domain you want to allow.

4macsolutions.com, *.4macsolutions.com, or woneal@4macsolutions.com are examples. DO NOT enter *.com, or something very general, because that would allow way too much spam! Give the system a second to verify the address (the box will turn from red to black) and then hit Add.

IMPORTANT

You MUST hit save or your changes will be lost!

While you are here, if you want to stop some messages from coming through….

The same rules as above apply here. Enter email addresses or domains, you want to keep from your inbox. Be careful here, because you will not get any notice that a message was recieved from these senders.

IMPORTANT

You MUST hit save or your changes will be lost!

Advanced settings…. While you are here….

The “spam filter” is really a full content filter. If you want to increase the security/privacy of the messages you send, you can enable additional filters, or set up your own. The included filters, shown above, can actually recognize credit card numbers, social security numbers, profanity, racially insensitive messages, and sexual overtones. If you want to be sure you aren’t ticking off your customers, these are easily enabled. You can deny the delivery of such messages, or quarantine them for review, and more. You can also “silent copy” messages from anyone in your domain to yourself to make sure your employees are on the up and up!

How to view email headers in any email program

Do you have a spam problem and you need help to understand why you got it or what happened? Do you have a message failure or bounce error? The tecnician helping you with this problem will probably ask for this information.

Hotmail

• Select the spam message
• Click the down arrow next to to the reply arrow
• Select "View message source."

Apple Mail

• Select the spam message
• Click View > Message > All Headers

Outlook

• Double-click to select the spam message and open it in a new window.
• Click File > Info > Properties.
• The header is displayed under "Internet Headers."

Thunderbird

• Select the spam message.
• Click View > Headers > All.

Yahoo!

• Select the spam message.
• Click "Full Headers" below the email.

Gmail

• Select the spam message.
• Click the down arrow next to the reply arrow.
• Select "Show Original."

Reducing Spam

Cyber Security Tip ST04-007
Reducing Spam

What is spam?
Spam is the electronic version of “junk mail.” The term spam refers to unsolicited, often unwanted, email messages. Spam does not necessarily contain viruses—valid messages from legitimate sources could fall into this category.

How can you reduce the amount of spam?
There are some steps you can take to significantly reduce the amount of spam you receive:

• Don’t give your email address out arbitrarily – Email addresses have become so common that a space for them is often included on any form that asks for your address—even comment cards at restaurants. It seems harmless, so many people write them in the space provided without realizing what could happen to that information. For example, companies often enter the addresses into a database so that they can keep track of their customers and the customers’ preferences. Sometimes these lists are sold to or shared with other companies, and suddenly you are receiving email that you didn’t request.

• Check privacy policies – Before submitting your email address online, look for a privacy policy. Most reputable sites will have a link to their privacy policy from any form where you’re asked to submit personal data. You should read this policy before submitting your email address or any other personal information so that you know what the owners of the site plan to do with the information (see Protecting Your Privacy for more information).

• Be aware of options selected by default – When you sign up for some online accounts or services, there may be a section that provides you with the option to receive email about other products and services. Sometimes there are options selected by default, so if you do not deselect them, you could begin to receive email from lists those lists as well.

• Use filters – Many email programs offer filtering capabilities that allow you to block certain addresses or to only allow email from addresses on your contact list. Some ISPs offer spam “tagging” or filtering services, but legitimate messages misclassified as spam might be dropped before reaching your inbox. However, many ISPs that offer filtering services also provide options for tagging suspected spam messages so the end user can more easily identify them. This can be useful in conjunction with filtering capabilities provided by many email programs.

• Report messages as spam – Most email clients offer an option to report a message as spam or junk. If your has that option, take advantage of it. Reporting messages as spam or junk helps to train the mail filter so that the messages aren’t delivered to your inbox. However, check your junk or spam folders occasionally to look for legitimate messages that were incorrectly classified as spam.

• Don’t follow links in spam messages – Some spam relies on generators that try variations of email addresses at certain domains. If you click a link within an email message or reply to a certain address, you are just confirming that your email address is valid. Unwanted messages that offer an “unsubscribe” option are particularly tempting, but this is often just a method for collecting valid addresses that are then sent other spam.

• Disable the automatic downloading of graphics in HTML mail – Many spammers send HTML mail with a linked graphic file that is then used to track who opens the mail message—when your mail client downloads the graphic from their web server, they know you’ve opened the message. Disabling HTML mail entirely and viewing messages in plain text also prevents this problem.

• Consider opening an additional email account – Many domains offer free email accounts. If you frequently submit your email address (for online shopping, signing up for services, or including it on something like a comment card), you may want to have a secondary email account to protect your primary email account from any spam that could be generated. You could also use this secondary account when posting to public mailing lists, social networking sites, blogs, and web forums. If the account start to fill up with spam, you can get rid of it and open a different one.

• Use privacy settings on social networking sites – Social networking sites typically allow you to choose who has access to see your email address. Consider hiding your email account or changing the settings so that only a small group of people that you trust are able to see your address (see Staying Safe on Social Network Sites for more information). Also, when you use applications on these sites, you may be granting permission for them to access your personal information. Be cautious about which applications you choose to use.

• Don’t spam other people – Be a responsible and considerate user. Some people consider email forwards a type of spam, so be selective with the messages you redistribute. Don’t forward every message to everyone in your address book, and if someone asks that you not forward messages to them, respect their request.

_________________________________________________________________

Authors: Mindi McDowell, Allen Householder
_________________________________________________________________

Copyright 2004, 2009 Carnegie Mellon University. Terms of use
US-CERT

Showing the Full Email Header (Apple Mail.app)

How to view the entire email header when our support team is assiting you stop spam from getting to your inbox.

Select the Spam Message

Click on the suspect message in your inbox to view the message.

View -> Message -> Long Headers

This shows the details that allow the message travel from your computer to your intended recipient. It also shows other details as to why it was (or was not) classified as spam.

See the Long Headers

You’ll see something like the above when you view the long headers.

Forward the spam message to support@4macsolutions.com

When you hit Forward, the Lonh Headers will be included in the message. Make sure you have not selected a portion of the message, otherwise you won’t get your intended result. This way, we get the entire message, which helps us determine the best way to keep that message from getting through to your inbox again.

Download this post for printing

Click here for a PDF version of this tip.

Accessing email when your mail server is not accessible

If your spam filtering account allows for it, the spam filter available on https://console.mxlogic.com serves as a backup, offering nearly 100% uptime even if your mail server goes down.

Access https://console.mxlogic.com via your web browser

Using your web browser, surf on over to https://console.mxlogic.com. Enter your email address, and your password.

For most users, this password is the same password as your mail account password. However, in some instances, this may have changed. Our system syncs up with your mail server for it’s password, but if it has been more than 4 hours since you have accessed your mail server since it went down, that password won’t work. A member of our service team will either reset your password or advise you of the new password.

Overview page

You enter on the Overview page, where you can see can see the current status of the Disaster Recovery, the number of messages that would be in your mailbox if it were operational, and read "What’s New" and other spam & virus related News.

Use the tabs at the top of this page to navigate to the various areas in the filtering system.

Quarantine

If you want to see what is in the spam quarantine, click the Quarantine tab. Then use the Search Critera to show what is in the filter for you. If you have something in the filter that is not spam, check the box and select one of the options "Release," "Always allow for User," "Delete," or "Delete All."

It is not necessary to delete unwanted items in the spam filter that you do not want. Items will expire automatically after 7 days.

Message Continuity

This link is only available when your Inbox isn’t available. This screen looks like most any web based email client. However, it’s special in that it is only available if your primary mail server is not available, and any action you take here, such as reading mail, or deleting, or replying, will be synced to your mail server when it comes back on line.

Policy Configuration

If you have customer administator rights in your domain, you will see the Policies tab. It’s best not to play around in here unless you understand that making changes here can drastically alter the messages you can or cannot recieve. A member of our support team will assist you should you see something in here you would like to implement in your account.

Setup

If you have customer administator rights in your domain, you will see the Setup tab. It’s best not to play around in here unless you understand that making changes here can drastically alter the messages you can or cannot recieve. A member of our support team will assist you should you see something in here you would like to implement in your account.

Reports

In the Reports section, if you see it, you can see Traffic Trends for your domain, including the Traffic Summary and Bandwidth Summary. Feel free to play around in here until you find a report style you like!