The quarantine system can be accessed directly via IMAP or the SpamExperts Control Panel.
Messages that are rejected with a 5xx SMTP rejection code at SMTP level are quarantined. So legitimate sending servers will have informed the sender about the rejection. Enabling the quarantine is optional. If you do not want to use the SpamExperts quarantine , it's possible to configure the systems to deliver all messages to the destinaion mail-server and use "Subject Notation" instead. This will tag messages on the subject , so that filters can be used directly on the destination mail-server.
By default, SpamExperts stores the quarantined spam for 14 days, however on a Local Cloud setup customers may overrule this value. Spam messages that were temporarily rejected at SMTP level are not listed in the quarantine, and will be automatically retried by legitimate sending servers
Web Interface access
From the Control Panel you can either Release, Release & Train, Blacklist & Remove, Release and Whitelist, or Remove messages blocked as spam. In case an email has been incorrectly blocked, clicking 'Release & Train" will result in delivery of the false positive to the original recipient. It will also trigger a report about the wrong classification to our systems to further improve the filtering.
It's also possible to do all the above actions directly from the log search page. Using the drop down menu next to the blocked message will give you the available options.
IMAP access
The quarantine system is powered by an IMAP backend. The backend is accessible as super-administrator (using the special "global" account), domain (using the domainname), and recipient (using the email address). Customers using the SpamExperts hosted cloud can connect to quarantine.antispamcloud.com.
Users on a SpamExperts Local Cloud can use the hostname of the primary server in that cluster (or a CNAME associated with it). We have instructions available for Thunderbird and Outlook. Using IMAP you can also apply mass actions to specific emails by dragging to specific folders.
For Local Cloud users there is also a special "global" account which can be used to retrieve IMAP access to all quarantined messages. This is for super administrators only.
IMAP folders
There are several special folders in the IMAP account:
- Caught: All incoming messages which have been quarantined can be found in this folder. It's not necessary to report these emails as Spam again, as they have already been classified as such. These emails will automatically expire.
- Caught (Outgoing): All outgoing messages which have been quarantined can be found in this folder (optional). It's not necessary to report these emails as Spam again, as they have already been classified as such. These emails will automatically expire.
- Training Requested: This is only relevant if a special option as been activated via the Software API to store a copy of unsure classifications in this folder. These messages have been delivered, but can be manually dragged/dropped to "Not Spam" or "Spam" to further fine-tune the systems. Please contact [email protected] if you would like more information on this one.
- Release & Train: This is a write-only folder (which cannot be accessed by the email client). Emails drag/dropped from "Caught" to this folder will be delivered to the recipient and reported as a classification mistake to our central systems
- Release: This is a write-only folder (which cannot be accessed by the email client). Emails drag/dropped from "Caught" to this folder will be delivered to the recipient only.
- Not Spam: This is a write-only folder (which cannot be accessed by the email client). Emails drag/dropped from "Caught" or "Training Requested" to this folder will be reported as a classification mistake to our central systems (it will not be delivered to the recipient)
- Spam: This is a write-only folder (which cannot be accessed by the email client). Emails drag/dropped to this folder will be reported as a Spam to our central systems (it will not be delivered to the recipient). This is useful to report spam which was not blocked correctly directly from the email client.
