Purified Data E-Mail Filtering FAQ's

Allocate Services

Forward Mail To Server

Found Virus Action

Administrator Contact Information

Size Limits

Filter Processing Rules and Exceptions - Including Blacklists and Whitelists

File Extensions To Block

Global Mail Handling Options

SPAM Action Level and Definition Settings

~Although there is no worldwide agreed upon definition of SPAM, it is most commonly defined as "any unwanted or unsolicited and electronically transmitted message which is intended for any one particular or no particular email recipient(s)." Basically, it is an email message which you did not request nor expected to receive. Usually it's purpose is for the selling or advertising of a particular cause or product through bulk e-mail to lists of e-mail addresses which hadn't requested any information.

~UCE or Unsolicited Commercial Email is a more narrowly defined term which was derived from the original concept of spam. Basically, UCE is an acronym made up of the three most universal designators of what most email recipients think of spam to be: Unsolicited (recipients didn't ask for it), Commercial (most spam tries to advertise a product), and Email (the message is transmitted electronically).

~You have a range of choices which allow you to control how to filter your email. Currently, our interface allows you to filter messages based upon:

*Your selected Domains and Sub-domains
*Both sender and recipient whitelists and blacklists
*File extensions
*Per-User, or Domain wide filtering
*Email message size
*Email attachment inclusions or exclusions. You have the ability to notify both senders and recipients of any email messages which have been stripped of any attachments.

Take a minute to examine our demo to see all the options available to every one of our mail filtering customers: Link To Demo

~Yes. You have the flexibility to determine if you want to send a notification message to the user informing them of what action you took on their email message.

Yes. You also have the ability to notify any sender or recipient of an email message identified as containing a virus. However, we will not send these messages when we find any viruses known to forge the "From" addresses when the virus sends itself out (ex. Klez, Bugbear, Magistr, Yaha...)

~Absolutely. Purified Data uses SSL ecryption to protect your data while interfacing with our site. Upon activation of our filtering services you will also receive a username and password allowing you total access to our secure email and usage statistics page.

~Yes. Purified Data provides you with an email statistics page which shows both the number of incoming and outgoing email messages which have been filtered. This utility allows you to sort usage by the day, month, year, size of the message and by message status.

~Purified Data prices it services on the number of messages filtered each month. With numerous pricing levels available, Purified Data is a cost effective solution for both small businesses and large corporate entities. Full spam and virus protection start at just $10/month. Please see our pricing pages for more details.

Allocate Services

~This section allows you to determine which domains you would like to filter and what filters you would like to initiate.

Forward Mail To Server

~This setting controls what server all mail will be sent to once it has been scanned by our mail filter. It should be set to the name or IP address of your incoming mail server. This field is required.


Found Virus Action

~This field allows you to select whether or not to notify a sender that a virus has been caught by Purified Data's virus filter.


Administrator Contact Information

~Please enter your name and contact information. This information will be used to automatically contact you if there are any major errors in mail processing.


Size Limits

~This setting allows you to choose which action to take based upon a set size limit per message. When a sender or recipient exceeds your set message size, you have the option of taking these actions:
1. Drop, Notify Sender: The entire message will be discarded and a notification with an explanation of what happened will be sent to the sender.
2. Drop, No Notification: The entire message will simply be discarded.
3. Bounce Message: The message will be bounced with a standard smtp error code. The sender should recieve a copy of the message they sent.
4. Strip Attachments: All messsage attachments will be detached and discarded. No notifications will be sent.
5. Strip Attachments, Notify Sender: All message attachments will be detached and discarded. The sender will be notified with an explaination of what happened.
6. Strip Attachments, Notify Recipients: All message attachments are replaced with a simple text message explaining why they were removed to the recipient.
7. Strip Attachments, Notify Sender and Recipients: Both of the above notification actions are performed.


Filter Processing Rules and Exceptions

~This section allows you to designate your whitelists and blacklists for both senders and recipients of messages. You may filter email addresses individually, by domain, or through infinite word combinations which you choose. Filtering rules take place in a certain order. The filtering order is as follows:


1. Recipient Blacklist: Messages to a recipient in this list will be deleted first.
2. Sender Blacklist: Messages from senders listed here will be deleted.
3. Recipient Spam Whitelist: Messages to a recipient in this list will not be processed by the Spam filter. It is strongly suggested that you include abuse addresses and any other mail boxes that may recieve spam and/or virus reports as they are likely to get filtered out if not listed here.
4. Sender Spam Whitelist: Messages from senders listed here will not be processed by the Spam filter.
5. Recipient Virus Whitelist: Messages to a recipient in this list will not be processed by the Virus filter. It is strongly suggested that you include abuse addresses and any other mail boxes that may recieve spam and/or virus reports as they are likely to get filtered out if not listed here.
6. Sender Virus Whitelist: Messages from senders listed here will not be processed by the Virus filter.
7. Recipient Spam Filter: Messages to recipients listed here will be processed by the spam filter. It is only necessary to list individual mailboxes if your default rule is not to run through the spam filter. You may also use wildcards to represent groups of similar addresses.
8. Recipient Virus Check: Messages to recipients listed here will be processed by the virus filter. It is only necessary to list individual mailboxes if your default rule is not to run through the virus filter. You may also use wildcards to represent groups of similar addresses.
9. Default Spam Filtering Action: If none of the above rules are matched, this rule will determine whether or not the message is filtered for spam.
10. Default Virus Filtering Action: If none of the above rules are matched, this rule will determine whether or not the message is filtered for viruses.


File Extensions To Block

~Files attached to messages which contain an extension matching an entry in this list will be replaced with a message explaining that the file was rejected. A message will also be sent to the sender explaining the situation.


Global Mail Handling Options

~This setting allows you to choose custom headers which will be included in the message when rules match calling for one of these headers to be included.

Choices Include:
1. Spam Tag: The subject designator of your choice will allow you to quickly identify a message as spam. This text will be prepended to the begining of the messages subject text.
2. Message Too Large: This message will be included in the e-mail headers under the field 'X-Spam-Disposition' when a message is too large to be processed.
3. Whitelisted Message: This message will be included in the e-mail headers under the field 'X-Spam-Disposition' when a message matches one of your whitelist rules. Messages whilelisted from spam filtering will not be run through our spam filtering rules.


SPAM Action Level and Definition Settings

~Purified Data's spam filter assigns a score to each message scanned. Actions to the message are taken based upon the threshold settings you have chosen.

There are three general threshold categories:
1. Suspected: These are messages suspected but not confirmed as being spam.
2. Confirmed: These are messages confirmed to be spam.
3. Deleted: These are messages that scored an extremely high spam likelyhood, and are safe to simply delete.

~Under each category there are settings which allow you to initiate specific actions:
1. Match Score: The numerical score which you specify here determines the threshold level for each category.
2. Add Header Flags: Choosing yes here will put SpamAssassin's scoring and a compact list of results into the header of the message.
3. Modify Subject Line: Choosing yes here will add a custom Subject Tag to each subject header of a message. (ie., {spam} = This tag would be added to each subject line of any suspected or confirmed spam message.)
4. Append SpamAssassin Report: This will attach a full report from SpamAssassin to the message as an attachment.
5. Bounce Message: All messages that fall within a category with this marked as "yes" will be bounced at the SMTP level from our server.
6. Delete Message: All messages which fall within a category with this marked as "yes" will be immediately deleted with no action taken.