Using the Barracuda Spam Firewall

The Rhodes email server receives 500,000 incoming messages a day.  Of that number, only about 15,000 (3%) are legitimate messages.  The rest are spam.  Spam is not only irritating or offensive.  Spam mail may contain viruses or spyware.  It may also make you susceptible to identity theft or fraud.

We have implemented Barracuda, a Spam Firewall designed to protect our email server from spam, virus, spoofing, phishing and spyware attacks.  Barracuda scans incoming messages and assigns each message a score based on virus and spam-related content.  Depending on the score, the message will be handled in one of four ways:

Blocked – Messages with high spam scores are automatically deleted.  Senders of those messages are notified that their emails were blocked as spam.  If you hear from a correspondent that their email has been blocked ("Subject: Undeliverable: **Message you sent blocked by our bulk email filter**"), please notify the Help Desk.  It’s possible you will also receive an email saying your message has been blocked.  If so, a spam program may be "spoofing" your address, so the "blocked message" notification is coming back to you as the presumed sender of spam; you may delete this message and ignore it.  However, if you get a "blocked message" notice for a legitimate email you have sent, please notify the Help Desk.

Quarantined – Messages with moderate-to-high spam scores are sent to a Quarantine Inbox on the Barracuda server.  You may receive an email notifying you that you have messages in your Quarantine Inbox.  Review these to see if any legitimate (non-spam) messages have been quarantined as messages are deleted from quarantine after fifteen (15) days. 

Tagged – Messages with low-to-moderate spam scores are delivered to your Inbox with [Possible Spam] in the subject line.  You may set Microsoft Outlook to put these messages in your Junk E mail folder as soon they arrive.

Delivered – Messages with very low scores are usually legitimate email messages.  These are delivered to your Inbox unchanged.

Using the web you can manage your quarantined messages, create and edit a personal whitelist (safe senders) and blacklist (blocked senders).

1. To connect to Barracuda, go to https://smtp4.rhodes.edu/ or connect to it from the Rhodes Login Page.

2. Enter your Rhodes network/email username and password and click on Login.

3. After logging in, a list of your quarantined messages appears.

4. To help you determine if a quarantined message is spam or not, click on a message Subject to view it

5. Handle each of the messages in your Quarantine Inbox by selecting one of the actions to the right of the subject line.

Deliver – Delivers the message to your Rhodes email Inbox (and removes it from Quarantine).
Whitelist – Adds the sender to your personal whitelist (allowed senders).  All future emails from this sender will automatically be delivered to you.
Delete – Deletes the message from your Quarantine Inbox.

6. You can also handle your quarantined email in bulk by checking the boxes next to multiple messages (or selecting all messages by clicking the checkbox in the gray bar to the left of "Time Received") and clicking the Delete, Deliver or Whitelist button above the message list as appropriate.

7. You’ll notice additional buttons for bulk handling above the message list:

Whitelist/Not Spam – Adds the sender(s) to your personal whitelist (allowed senders) and "trains" Barracuda to better recognize suspect emails as not being spam.

Classify as Spam – Trains Barracuda to better recognize spam so similar messages will receive higher spam scores and may be blocked rather than quarantined.

Classify as Not Spam – Trains Barracuda to better recognize suspect emails as not being spam.

8. Click the Preferences tab at the top of the Barracuda window to manage your whitelist and blacklist and to set your preferred configuration of how quarantined mail and spam are handled.

9. Use the Whitelist/Blacklist tab under Preferences to create and manage lists of allowed senders (whitelist) and blocked senders (blacklist).  You can add individual addresses or domains by typing them in the text box and clicking the Add button.  Adding a domain (such as family.com) to your whitelist makes anyone with that email domain (mom@family.com, dad@family.com, etc.) an allowed sender.  Use the Bulk Edit button to open a window to add multiple addresses or domains to your whitelist at one time.  Use the trash can to remove addresses from your whitelist or blacklist.

10. Use the Quarantine Settings tab under Preferences to tell Barracuda how you want quarantined messages (those with moderate-to-high spam scores) handled. We strongly recommend that you leave Enable Quarantine set to Yes!  With this setting, Barracuda will keep the messages in its Quarantine Inbox.  You may set how often you receive a notice telling you there are messages in your Quarantine InBox – and where that message is sent.  If you set Enable Quarantine to No, all these messages will be delivered to your Rhodes email Inbox with [Quarantine] in subject line.

11. We advise that you use the default Spam Settings as set up by our email administrator.  If you set Enable Spam Filtering to No, your spam will not be blocked!

When you mark messages as spam or not spam (in Step 7), that information goes into the Bayesian Learning Database to "train" Barracuda how to better distinguish spam from legitimate email.  If you inadvertently marked a legitimate message as spam or a junk message as not spam, you may want to Reset the Bayes Database to remove the incorrect information.  Unfortunately, it will also remove all other information you have set as "spam" or "not spam" and you will essentially have to restart that training.  Unless …

… If you’re aggressive about marking quarantined messages as "spam" or "not spam," you may want to occasionally Backup Bayesian Database.  That way, if you wrongly mark a message as "spam," you can Reset the database and then Restore Database from your backup so your previously accurate spam training is not lost.