Email Assistant

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General Questions About Filtering Settings

How are the Junk Email Filters different from the spam filters in my email client?
About 95% --- that's how accurate your filters can be with the Junk Email Assistant superior design. In addition, the mail filters found in email products have a number of limitations and often assume a "one size fits all" solution. You are often expected to develop your own filter rules from the limited tools provided. Further, you must still download email before the mail client can filter it, possibly wasting time and bandwidth while waiting to read mail, such as spam, that you would not want anyway.

The Junk Email Assistant filters do all email processing behind the scenes before it arrives in your inbox. This saves time and bandwidth by not forcing you to download superfluous email, such as unsolicited offers. Moreover, improvements to the filters are done without modifications to your email client or account.

How do I know junk email is being filtered and not my regular (legitimate) email?
Advanced filtering technique built on heuristic rules, lists of approved and blocked senders, and databases of known junk email maintain the effectiveness of the rules system. Despite these advanced measures, some good email may get caught since the concept of junk email is subjective (one man's trash is another man's treasure). To remedy this, you can set a lenient-to-aggressive tolerance for filtering suspicious email: lenient filtering potentially lets more junk email through, but also minimizes the risk of legitimate email from getting mistakenly directed to the Message Center; conversely, aggressive filtering catches more suspicious email at the risk of mistakenly diverting normal email to the Message Center. You are notified with regular summary reports of your activity.

Does someone read personal emails?
No. All email processing is done through automated filters, in milliseconds. In the event a "suspicious" email is discovered, it will be directed to your private Message Center pending your review. If you would like to pass on a suspicious email to spam@postini.com for analysis.

Am I notified when email is quarantined as suspicious junk email?
You will receive a regular report via email of the activity in your Message Center. However, you can log in to the Message Center at any time to monitor and review detained messages.

What are Message Center filter categories?
In addition to the Bulk Mail default filter category, you can also select:

• Sexually Explicit - Block inappropriate sexually oriented messages.
  
• Get Rich Quick - Block the moneymaking offers and high-risk investments messages.
  
• Racially Insensitive - Block offensive messages about sex, creed, religion, and race.
  
• Special Offers - Block annoying advertisements.

What is Filter Sensitivity?
Filter Sensitivity determines how aggressive the filters are in capturing suspect email. The settings are Lenient, Moderate, and Aggressive. Lenient will capture less suspect email, while aggressive is likely to capture more.

What is the Approved Senders list?
Entering specific email addresses or entire domains to the Approved Senders list will allow these to override your junk mail filters and allow that email to flow directly to your inbox.

What is the Blocked Senders list?
Entering specific email addresses or entire domains will prevent ALL messages from those listed will be detained in your Message Center.

What if I want to receive junk email?
You can turn the Junk Email Assistant off at anytime by simply logging in to your Message Center, and turning OFF the Junk Email toggle switch on the Junk Email page. (Other applications, such as virus scanning, can also be turned on or off in this manner.)

However, if too much legitimate email is being detained, first try setting "Filter Sensitivity" to moderate or lenient and/or uncheck any "Filter Categories" that are unwanted. It also helps to explicitly list certain email addresses to allow their messages through the filters, regardless of content. Do this by entering valid addresses in the Approved Senders field.

What happens in the event that the email processing servers' fail?
A large number of enterprise-scale servers are dedicated to processing email. However, in the event of a catastrophe, email will be passed through the system by defaulting to your email provider's regular mail servers. There will be no noticeable performance hit. Any suspect messages that were diverted to the Message Center are contained on redundant disk storage devices that are backed up.

How often is email deleted from the Message Center?
Email messages are kept in the Message Center for 14 days following the receipt of the message--this includes any messages that have been moved to your "Trash Folder". After 14 days from first receipt, any message will be deleted. Email service providers will send an email activity report on a regular basis to remind you to check your Message Center. You can also access the Message Center at any time.

What if I receive spam, what should I do with it?
If junk email reaches your inbox, you can simply delete the message or forward it to spam@postini.com. You can also visit the Message Center and add the sender's address to your "Blocked Senders" list if it appears to be a repeat offender, preventing that sender from reaching the inbox again. It might also be useful to try increasing the sensitivity level in the configuration or turn on specific filter categories.

What if legitimate email is quarantined in your Message Center?
Unfortunately, some legitimate email may be erroneously directed to your Message Center. This is due to the subjective nature of email messages and what could possibly be considered junk email. If a significant amount of valid email is being misdirected to the Message Center, You should build a list of approved senders, thereby minimizing the possibility of detaining a valid email in the future.

Also, from the Message Center, click "deliver" for any legitimate email you will be prompted to add to the sender to the "Approved Sender" list. This is the easiest way to improve your filter accuracy. You may also manually build your approved senders list by visiting your junk email settings.

Does the Junk Mail Assistant watch for obscene language and other questionable content?
The Junk Email Assistant is tuned for identifying unsolicited commercial email (UCE), otherwise known as spam or junk email. This is somewhat different than filtering specifically for content, like most email filtering. For example, a friend sends a joke containing obscenities. This originates from a known source, whereas a message of unknown origin containing obscenities that refers to a pornography site WOULD likely be directed to the Message Center.

Does the Junk Mail Assistant watch for email only written in English?
Yes, at this time English is the only language supported.

How do I set up Junk Email filters?

1. Log into your Message Center and click on the “Junk Email” link at the top   

2. Make sure that the 'ON' button is selected activated.   

3. Select 'Filter Categories' decide what type of filtering you would like to take place.   

4. Always 'Save Changes' to save or 'Cancel' to cancel and begin again.   

5. Also check 'Filter Sensitivity' to determine how aggressive you want your filters.  

6. Add friends, family, and acquaintances to your 'Approved Senders' list and add nuances to the 'Blocked Senders' list.

Click the links in the Highlights box above for more info.