As most of you have noticed, we have migrated all InfoWest accounts to the new InfoWest Spam Trap system. The transition has not been as smooth as we would like, but we are making steady progress. We hope this article will address most of the concerns customers have brought to our attention. We hope this will help you make better use of the new system, and enjoy a much cleaner email inbox.
We worked over a month to install and test the InfoWest spam trap system internally before launching it with our customers. When we added our customer accounts, we quickly found that many of the settings that worked fine in our test environment did not work well with over 10,000 users. We have spent many hours this week with the product developers to fine-tune the settings, and have made much progress. We have more plans to improve the service, as we’ll outline later in this article. For now, here are some of the top questions we are hearing from you, our customers:
“I am noticing more spam that I had before with Postini. Why is this?”
The Spam Trap uses advanced Bayesian learning techniques to customize itself for you. There are some things you can do to help fine-tune your own spam trap so it will be able to distinguish spam from non-spam messages. If you want to learn more about how the system “learns” about your personal spam preferences, see the Wikipedia article on Bayesian Filtering at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_filtering
Here are a few things you can do to quickly cut down the number of spam messages that come to your inbox:
Check your spam trap daily. With the old system, you could safely ignore quarantined spam, but the new system has not yet “learned” what you consider spam and what you consider legitimate email. Messages that show up in your spam trap are probably spam, but if you verify that they really are spam, the system will be able to automatically recognize the spam better in the future. Use the red “X” buttons 
in your Spam Trap to mark messages that are spam, and use the green checkmark 
to mark those that should not be blocked in the future, then click “Submit Changes”
The more you “train” your spam trap, the better the system will be able to “learn” and effectively block spam.
Tell the Spam Trap when it misses one. You can have Spam Trap add links to the bottom of all your email messages. You click these links to tell the Spam Trap if the messages are spam or not. The links look like this:
BEGIN-INFOWEST-SPAM-TRAP-TRAINING-LINKS ------------------------------------------------------ NOTE: This message was trained as non-spam. If this is wrong, please correct the training as soon as possible. Teach CanIt if this mail (ID 5551212) is spam: Spam: http://spamtrap.infowest.com/canit/b.php?c=s&i=5551212&m=1454f787223e Not spam: http://spamtrap.infowest.com/canit/b.php?c=n&i=5551212&m=1454f787223e Forget vote: http://spamtrap.infowest.com/canit/b.php?c=f&i=5551212&m=1454f787223e ------------------------------------------------------ END-INFOWEST-SPAM-TRAP-TRAINING-LINKS
To add these links to your email, go to the Spam Trap, click on Preferences, then Stream Settings, and change the line “S-2500 Add links to messages to train Bayesian analyzer” to “inline.” You can shut this off any time in the future if you like.
As you train your filter, you will quickly find that the number of spam messages in your inbox will decrease, and legitimate email will not be blocked as often.
“I clicked the green check box to accept a message, but it did not show up in my email box yet.”
When a message is held as suspected spam, we don’t actually store a copy of the message on our server. We only store about 8k of the message. The sending server is told to retry sending later, and if you have approved the message, it will be delivered to your mailbox at that time. Sometimes mail servers will resend the message in a few minutes, sometimes hours. If the sending server doesn’t retry later (which they are supposed to do), it may not get to you.
We have ordered another storage server with more hard drive space to allow us to store the entire held messages for up to a week so they can be forwarded to your inbox like they were with the old system. This new system will also speed up the Spam Trap web interface considerably.
We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused, and are working hard to solve this issue. The best solution for now is to add the sender to the “always accept mail from …” list in your spam trap and ask the sender to resend the message. We hope to have the new storage server up by the end of the week.
“I got a spam message in my inbox. Should I send you a copy of it so you can investigate?”
No. Please don’t do that. See the instructions above for adding inline links to your emails so you can automatically tell the spam trap if it missed one. By using the links as explained above, the filter will get better at detecting spam in the future.
“I have to log in each time, and don’t want to type my username and password over and over.”
We have added a “remember my username and password” check box to the spamtrap.infowest.com page now.
“I don’t remember my password.”
Many of us have our email programs “memorize” our password, and have forgotten it long ago. If you need help remembering your password, please give us a call. We can’t give that information out over email for security reasons.
“What about viruses? I don’t get notifications about them being blocked any more.”
We don’t send notification for viruses, we just kill the infected messages automatically. There is no reason for you to waste time reviewing those messages. They are being blocked.
“I don’t understand how to use a certain feature in the Spam Trap.”
You can turn on inline help for your Spam Trap. The help will explain most of the functions on the page you are visiting, and is usually easy to understand. To turn on inline help, go to http://spamtrap.infowest.com/canit/prefs.php and change the line:
“P-1300 Hide help text by default” to “No”.
Of course you can always email, call or message us for help. We have been a bit overloaded the last few days, but we’re doing our best to respond as quickly as possible.
“I got a bunch of spam Monday night. Why?”
The filter was down for a short time Monday night because of a database communication problem. We have repaired the problem. Over 40% of all the email that hits the InfoWest system is spam. For that short time, much of that got through.
“If it’s not broken, don’t fix it! Why did you get rid of the old system?”
The old system did work exceptionally well. However, Postini has continued to raise the price for us to provide that service, while we have not wanted to raise rates for our customers. Postini, in our opinion, is now concentrating much more on improving the product for their corporate customers than ISP resellers like us. They have added many new features to their spam filters, such as outgoing filtering, but have not made them available to ISP’s. New contract terms were also more restrictive on the types of services we could offer our customers, and what types of customers we could serve.
We have long wanted to be able to offer a basic free spam filtering product. With Postini, we could not do this.
Because we host the new spam trap system ourselves, we are able to keep costs down, customize the product to meet our customer needs, and offer varying levels of service (free, premium, etc.) as needed. New features such as outgoing mail filtering will be active shortly, and we will be able to implement any and all future upgrades for any of our customers.
In short, the new Spam Trap product gives us the ability to provide a more customizable, economical, powerful spam filtering product for more of our customers. We’re confident you will notice the improvements in performance as we continue to fine tune the system, and as you personally fine-tune it to your needs. We do welcome your feedback on how we can continue to improve.
August 3, 2006 at 06:12
The “remember my login info” feature is a small improvement in logging in, but my question is why should I need to login at all? Why does this progam need the “security” of a login?
Also, to delete all the trapped spam messages now takes two steps where the old only took one. Another minus.
Thanks, JL
August 3, 2006 at 07:13
The feature that I find most inconvenient is the need to enter my e-mail address every time I open the spam box. I hope that can be changed. Poor old Postini, it wasn’t broken. Too bad you fixed it!
August 3, 2006 at 07:28
If we didn’t have you log in, anyone who happened to get a forwarded message from you would be able to log into your spam trap and read any mail there, legitimate or not.
We’ll keep looking for a better solution for the login inconvenience. For now, I hope the checkbox helps by keeping your username and password in the boxes so you just have to hit the “login” button.
August 3, 2006 at 07:49
Another tip:
If you have a message in your spam trap from someone you know, you can unblock future messages from them very easily.
Just click on the “name” part of their email address (ie: “username” in “username@domain.com”) and you can tell spamtrap not to block that user any more.
Likewise, you can unblock entire domains by clicking on the domain.com part of the address.
August 3, 2006 at 08:01
i like the spam trap very much. I think it is working great
August 3, 2006 at 08:23
ugh! good spam trap! kill nasty message from india. YES!
August 3, 2006 at 08:41
Your need to know info is great, but have a problem reading the really small print even with bifocals
August 3, 2006 at 09:00
1. Your response to “I clicked the green check box to accept a message, but it did not show up in my email box yet” is unacceptable. When I accept a message, I expect it to show up in my mail immediately, just as it did in the past. Today when I went to the list of blocked messages, I accepted three of them. I will be interested in seeing if any of them show up.
2. At the end of some messages the words SPAM, NOT SPAM, and FORGET PREVIOUS VOTE appear. Do I have to click on one of those every time I read a message, particularly if the message passed the spam blocker and I agree?
3. At the end of other messages links appear for Spam, Not spam, and Forget vote. Again, do I have to click on one of those links every time I read a message, particularly if the message passed the spam blocker and I agree?
August 3, 2006 at 09:05
I think I would rather have the spam messages sent directly to my inbox so I can quickly delete them…rather than have to go login a couple of times a day to see if there is anything important in my Spam Trap. It’s wasting my time. I have 2 e-mail addresses that come to my company inbox, so the saving of the info won’t work for me…not only do I have to login each time but I have to see which e-mail address I’m logging in for. Can you set it so my spam just comes to my inbox?
August 3, 2006 at 09:26
One I’m happy with the training of the Bayesian filters, it will be nice to disable the notification email every day that tells me the filter is working.
I appreciate your efforts to keep our costs down, and functionality up.
August 3, 2006 at 09:49
I’d just like to add my $.02 about Spam Trap.
If you log into the system, it shows you your “pending message” where you can accept or reject them. However, if you want to reject all of them at once (which is pretty common) you can click on the “Trap Contents” link on the left. This page, by default, also shows you your pending messages. However, on this page you’ve got a handy “Reject All as Spam” button. It’d be nice to have this button (or an equivalent) on the other default page where you log in as well (one less button-click).
Anyhow, I’ve been training the filter for a bit now and have noticed a significant drop in the amount of spam. Thanks.
August 3, 2006 at 12:42
I love the new “free” spam trap. I delete them with just ONE click a day. Saves my time for my real e-mail.
Thank You, CBC
August 3, 2006 at 14:05
To fix the “small print” complaint, hold down CTRL and use the mouse scrol wheel to change the print size. The UP and DOWN arrows should change print size also.
August 5, 2006 at 14:19
I was out of town for a week and had so many “pending messages”! Do you delete the Spam after 2 wks if I don’t get to them?
August 7, 2006 at 10:06
Some good questions here. Sorry I wasn’t here this weekend to answer them.
1. “Should I click on the spam/not spam links every time”?
If the message says, “NOTE: This message was trained as non-spam. If this is wrong,
please correct the training as soon as possible.” and it is NOT spam, you don’t need to click. There is nothing to correct.
If the message just says, “Teach CanIt if this mail (ID xxxxxx) is spam:” it’s best if you DO click the links. If it is spam and should not have gotten through, you can teach the filter to block similar messages in the future. Likewise if it is NOT spam, the filter will better be able to differentiate good email from bad if you train it on the good ones as well.
2. Small print: See Bill Day’s comment above. Great advice. We’re looking to improve the interface as well, as the print is small and we have had a number of comments on that.
3. “I would rather just have the spam come to my inbox and I can filter it from there.”
Sure thing, you can do that. Go to your Spam Trap, click “preferences,” then “stream settings.” look for the setting “S-1200 Only tag spam — do not hold any messages”. Change that to “Yes.” “Spammy” messages will come in with the subject starting as “[Spam …”.
4. “I can only see 20 messages at a time, but I have 500 messages pending. It’s taking for ever to clear these out. What do I do?”
Go to the “preference” link, then look for “P-100 Number of entries to display per page”. Change that number to 100, 200, 500 or 1000 to suit your needs. Then, it’s very easy to quickly scan one page for any good emails and forward them through. After you’re done with that, click the red “X” at the top of the page to mark ALL as spam and hit “submit changes.” Poof, they’re gone, and the filter is better trained.
5. “I need to have my approved messages sent to me immediately!”
Good news. We installed the new database server this weekend, and this capability is in place for new messages. because of some of the downtime required to get the new server in place, some emails may be backed for a little while, but any new messages caught in the spam trap should come directly to your inbox if you approve them.
We’re still testing this feature out but so far it looks good, and the load on the spam trap filters is at a much more sane level now.
Keep the comments coming, and thanks especially to those who have offered advice and solutions.
August 8, 2006 at 20:35
There was a place I thought I could ask for messages without multiple addresses and wrote, “Do not accept mail with multiple addresses.”
Apparently that was not a working request for spam trap as the message now appears on all my mail and I still get mail with multiple addresses on the message page.
How do I train incoming mail to reject multiple addresses when half the messages are from approved senders?
August 9, 2006 at 08:07
WE have 2 email ids, why should we have to log in with email address and password ever time we swith ids. The GD thing should do it automactily, Yahoo.com email is much simpler and easier also so was your old system.
ONCE AGAIN IF IT IS NOT BROKE DON’t FIX IT.
ALSO PASTE ON YOUR MONITOR, KISS KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID. some of us arenit to computer literate.
Don Roberts
August 16, 2006 at 16:03
A few changes we’ve made recently.
1 - Font and colors have been changed. The list of emails is shown in larger text with a darker color. I hope this will help!
2 - Notification emails have changed slightly. Now instead of causing panic by saying you have “pending” messages, we explain that these are probably spam, and are held in your spam trap for your review at your convenience.
3 - We’ve tightened up some of the spam “rules.” For example, if a message has a web site address in it that is a known spammer destination, we will trap the message.
Upcoming changes
1 - You will no longer have to log in with a username and password to “vote” on spam if you have inline voting links turned on in your email. Hope to have this online by the end of the week.
2 - Auto-whitelisting. You will soon have the option to automatically add addresses to your “Whitelist” if you send an mail to someone. For example, if you send mail to your business partner, email from him will not be blocked in the future.
Again, please let us know what else we can do to help make this a better product!
August 16, 2006 at 16:21
Update - #1 (you do not have to log in to vote) above is now complete. Enjoy!
September 12, 2006 at 16:07
I subscribe to several newsletters and it doesn’t seem to make any difference how many times I mark it as “not spam,” they are still blocked every time. Likewise, spam newsletters I mark as spam continue to come through, even though I have rejected them each time. The instruction from Randy on Aug 3rd above does not seem to work as the sender or domain are not highlighted to be selected.
December 8, 2006 at 19:08
WordPress Trackback Spam!!!
I have installed plugins that prevent comment spams, but this won't prevent trackback to be blocked. I've been spam by many
MFA websites that most probably is from the same network with trackback, but they are not linking me on their website. May I
know how do they do it and how do I stop it? Without disabling trackback?
Thanks, and I'm using WordPress.
April 29, 2008 at 16:30
The sending server is told to retry sending later, and if you have approved the message, it will be delivered to your mailbox at that time. Sometimes mail servers will resend the message in a few minutes, sometimes hours. If the sending server doesn’t retry later (which they are supposed to do), it may not get to you.