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require_once("../common.php");

pagehead("Company Directory - Help", "Spam Help",
         MENU_NAVBAR_HEADER);
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<p>
The Company Directory implements a subset of the International
Telecommunications Union's (<a
href="http://www.itu.int/home/index.html">ITU</a>) standard for information
directories (<a
href="http://www.itu.int/rec/recommendation.asp?type=items&lang=e&parent=T-REC-X.500-200102-I">
X.500</a>), accessible via the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (<a
href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1777.txt">LDAP</a>).

<p>
At our Company, The Directory is used for, among other things, the base for
authentication and configuration data for the user population.

<p>
Each users's LDAP entry (uniquely identified by a Distinguished Name or DN) is
consulted by the mail system for various mail related tasks:

<ul>
        <li>
        determine what addresses users accept mail at;

        <li>
        determine where mail destined for a user is routed to;

        <li>
        get a users's desired settings for dealing with entities that Send them
        Phenomenal Amounts of Mail (SPAM).
</ul>

<p>
This help text covers the last bullet: SPAM settings.

<p>
There are three settings stored in LDAP that a user can edit for dealing with
SPAM:

<ol>
        <p>
        <li> <strong> whitelists: </strong>

                <p>
                Each of these entries represents a string pattern in the <em>
                From: </em> address of emails that, if matched, causes the mail
                to pass the SPAM filter unmolested.  Two characters are special:
                asterisks represent a string of any number of any characters,
                and question marks represent any single character.  For example:

                <ul>
                        <li> <em> *@thisdomain.com </em>
                        allows all mails to come through from anyone at
                        `thisdomain.com';

                        <li> <em> sender?@thisdomain.com </em>
                        allows all mails to come through from
                        `sender1@thisdomain.com', `sender2@thisdomain.com',
                        `sender3@thisdomain.com', etc.
                </ul>

                <p>
                The use of this field will allow you to alter the anti-SPAM
                system to allow mails in that you find are being flagged as
                SPAMs and delivered to your SPAM folder, but that you know are
                not SPAM.

        <p>
        <li> <strong> blacklists: </strong>

                <p>
                Each of these entries represents a string pattern in the <em>
                From: </em> address of emails that, if matched, causes the mail
                to be flagged as SPAM and automatically delivered to your SPAM
                folder.  These entries are in the same format as whitelist
                entries.

                <p>
                The use of this field will allow you to alter the anti-SPAM
                system to flag messages as SPAM that are passing through the
                filter without being properly flagged as the SPAM that they are,
                to blacklist someone that you really dislike, etc.

        <p>
        <li> <strong> threshold: </strong>

                <p>
                The anti-SPAM system operates by performing a number of tests on
                an email that is in the process of delivery.  These tests are
                usually things like pattern matches, test from domains of known
                spammers, forgery tests, etc. (for a complete list, please see
                <a href="http://www.spamassassin.org/tests.html"> this list of
                defaults </a> but keep in mind that we may alter some of the
                default scores locally).  Each of these tests, when matched by
                the incoming mail, adds a `score' to the mail (which starts with
                a score of zero).  If the sum of the scores at the end of
                testing exceeds the specified <em> threshold, </em> then the
                mail is flagged as SPAM, and is automatically delivered to the
                user's `spam' folder.

                <p>
                Adjust your threshold to a level you feel comfortable with.
                IMPORTANT: Monitor your `spam' folder for false positives! You
                won't know your threshold setting is too low if you don't do
                this for a while until you are comfortable with the settings.

                <p>
                You can see which SPAM tests an email matched, and how they
                contributed to the score of the message, by inspecting the email
                headers.  In Microsoft Outlook, this is done by the following
                procedure:

                <ul>
                        <li> load up the full message
                        <li> select `view'
                        <li> select `options'
                        <li> select `Internet Headers'
                        <li> look for headers that start with `X-Spam'
                </ul>

                <p>
                If you believe a certain test scores too high or too low, or
                desire more control over SPAM settings than is afforded by the
                web interface, please contact technical support.

                <p>
                To disable the spam filter for your account, a setting of 9999
                is provided in the threshold radio; setting your threshold to
                this effectively disables the filter.
</ol>

<p>
In order to see the contents of your `spam' folder, you will need to subscribe
to the IMAP folder called `spam'.  If you cannot figure out how to do this,
please contact tech support and we will assist you.

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