About the Barracuda Spam and Virus Firewall
About your Barracuda Login
Working with your Quarantine
Changing your Barracuda Settings
CCPL Spam and Firewall FAQ
Spam Filter Home Page
About the Barracuda Spam and Virus Firewall
The Barracuda Spam and Virus Firewall is able to trap suspected spam messages into a quarantine for each user of the CCPL Internet Service. This is very similar to other popular anti-virus and anti-spam quarantines. Messages that reach a certain spam "point value" based on our filtering rules will be sent to your quarantine while messages considered to NOT be spam will be delivered to your inbox as normal, and will be ready for pickup by your normal email program.
You will receive a message each day listing all of the emails in your quarantine at that time. This is typically sent around 2 PM each day.
While working directly within your Barracuda Quarantine, you can mark messages in your quarantine as SPAM or NOT SPAM. Marking a quarantined message as NOT SPAM will cause it to be delivered to you as normal. Marking a message as SPAM will cause it to be permanently removed from your quarantine.
When you mark a message as SPAM or NOT SPAM, you are also tailoring the Barracuda's spam detection to your own personal preferences. Since not everyone will always agree that a particular message is SPAM, Person A's spam preferences will not influence Person B's spam preferences.
This ensures that each user is able to more precisely classify exactly what they consider to be spam or not spam.
About your Barracuda Login
Your Barracuda Login is the same as your Internet Service and Email login. Enter your email address and password at the login screen and you will be directed to your quarantine pages on the firewall.
Logging in from your email account
Each day the Barracuda will send you a Quarantine Summary email message (assuming your quarantine is not empty). When viewing this message, you should see something similar to the following:
This particular example shows a preview of a Barracuda quarantine. Each entry currently in your quarantine is displayed to you, along with any actions that can be performed on that particular entry. If you wish to manage your inbox from here, you have the following options:
- Deliver- Send this particular email through to your inbox where it can later be picked up by an email program.
- Whitelist- Whitelist the sender of this message and deliver this message to your inbox. Messages from this sender will always be delivered to you.
- Delete- Delete this item from your quarantine permanently. Remember that quarantined items will be automatically deleted after 10 days. This means you are not required to delete items for them to be go away.
After clicking any of these actions, your web browser should open up and automatically take you to your actual Barracuda quarantine. The requested action will be performed, but you will remain logged in.
Alternatively, you can log in to your quarantine by clicking the click here link at the bottom of the email the Barracuda sends you.
At this point, you are fully logged into the Barracuda and can modify your Barracuda Spam and Virus Filter Settings. If you are finished working with your quarantine, click the Log Off link at the upper right of the Barracuda Quarantine screen.
Logging in Manually
If you wish to log in to the Barracuda manually from your web browser, you will need to manually type in your email address and password. This link is also available from http://internet.carr.org.
Barracuda Web Address: https://mail-in.carr.org/
Example below:
Login procedure
- Select the desired language. NOTE: your browser must support these languages or they will not be displayed correctly. In most cases, you should leave the language set to English.
- Click into the Username box and type your ENTIRE email address. If your username is jdoe, you would type jdoe@carr.org as your Barracuda username.
- Click into the Password box and type your Password.
- Click the Login button.
Working with your Quarantine
After logging in, you should see a screen similar to the following:
On the above example, you will see various different buttons and links that you can click on to manage your quarantine.
Viewing a Quarantined Message
Before you attempt to classify a message as SPAM or NOT SPAM, you may want to take a look at it. To view a message, simply click any part of the "From" or "Subject" line. This will cause the requested message to show up in a separate window.
Individual Message Controls
The following three items will appear next to each entry in your quarantine. Pressing these buttons will perform the action on the particular message in the same row as the button.
- Deliver - Clicking this item will cause it to immediately be delivered to your inbox, meaning that you can now download it with your regular email program.
- Whitelist - Clicking this item will place the sender of this particular message into your whitelist, as well as deliver this particular message to your inbox. Future email from this sender will always be considered NOT SPAM.
- Delete - Deletes this message from your quarantine, but does not explicitly mark the message as spam. Deleted messages CANNOT be recovered.
Batch Message Controls
The following two buttons apply only to entries in which you have placed a check mark in the far left column.
- Classify as Not Spam - Marks all checked messages as NOT SPAM and delivers them to your inbox where they will be ready for pickup by your regular email program.
- Classify as Spam - Marks all checked messages as SPAM and deletes them from your quarantine inbox.
Changing your Barracuda Settings
Each user with a Barracuda quarantine can modify his or her spam filter settings.
Accessing the Settings
Log in to your Barracuda Quarantine as described above, and click the Preferences tab at the top of the message list.
Important: After making a settings change, make sure you click the associated Save Changes button or the changes you make will not be saved by the Barracuda.
Managing your Whitelist/Blacklist
To access your whitelist and blacklist settings, click the Whitelist/Blacklist tab. The following example shows an example Whitelist/Blacklist screen with a blacklisted and whitelisted entries already entered.
To use these features, simply fill in an email address in the appropriate box and click Add. Make sure you use the correct list or you may accidentally blacklist a friend, or whitelist a spammer!
Please note that it is almost worthless to blacklist spammer addresses. Almost all spam is sent from false, constantly changing email addresses. You may block a particular email address only to see the same spam come in a moment later under a different address. For this reason blacklists are best used when the sender's email address does NOT change from message to message.
- Emails coming from a whitelisted address will always be allowed through the Barracuda.
- Emails coming from a blacklisted address will always be blocked.
To delete an entry from a list, simply click the trash can icon next to the particular entry you wish to remove.
Changing your Quarantine Settings
To access your quarantine settings, click the Quarantine Settings tab. You should see a screen similar to the example below.
Quarantine Enable/Disable
Disabling your quarantine will cause mail that would have been quarantined to instead go directly to your inbox.
Quarantine Notification
If you wish to change the address that Barracuda sends Quarantine Summary emails to, you may do so here.
Default Language
If your web browser supports it, you may change the language that Barracuda uses. (Not Recommended)
Changing your Spam Settings
To access your spam settings, click the Spam Settings tab. An example screenshot is below. Descriptions follow in the below sections.
Spam Filter Enable/Disable
Setting this to No will stop the Barracuda from scanning your mail at all. All mail will be passed through as if the Barracuda was never there with two notable exceptions:
- E-mails containing viruses will still be blocked.
- Emails caught by reputable external email blacklists will still be blocked. These managed blacklists have always been in place since CCPL began offering Internet service.
CCPL Spam and Virus Firewall FAQ
What is the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall?
I'm getting spam that isn't quarantined, and some legitimate emails are being quarantined. Why?
Instead of quarantining email as spam and sending me a quarantine digest, why don't you just delete it?
Should I report legitimate messages that are quarantined and spam messages that aren't?
I'm pretty sure I didn't receive a legitimate email that I'm pretty sure someone sent to me. What can be done about that?
How does the Barracuda Spam and Virus Firewall decide how to score incoming email?
Is there any way I can tell the Barracuda Spam Filter what I think is and is not spam?
Spam Issues
Virus Issues
What is the Barracuda Spam and Virus Firewall?
The Barracuda Spam and Virus Firewall is CCPL's latest effort in the ongoing battle against email spam and virus infections. The Barracuda Firewall sits between the Internet and CCPL's mail server, where it is capable of scanning incoming email for spam and viruses. While everyone using a CCPL email account currently benefits from the Barracuda's basic spam and virus filtering, you may also set up a personal quarantine that will allow you to classify your own mail as spam or not spam, thereby improving the Barracuda's future accuracy in classifying your email.
I'm getting spam that isn't quarantined, and some legitimate emails are being quarantined. Why?
That sort of thing is bound to happen with any spam-detection mechanism, because there is no absolutely foolproof way for a computer to differentiate between spam and legitimate email. A reasonably intelligent human can make very accurate "Spam" and "Not Spam" decisions fairly easily. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depending on your point of view) we have yet to learn how to make computers think exactly like humans.
The Barracuda spam firewall scores each incoming message from 1 to 10 based on certain characteristics that are commonly found in spam. The higher the score, the more likely the message is to be spam.
As it is currently configured, the Barracuda blocks any message with a score of 9 or higher. Something with a score that high is so riddled with spam characteristics that it can't be anything other than spam. Messages with a score of 9 or higher never reach your mailbox.
Messages with a score of 3 or lower are sent straight through to your mailbox on the assumption that they are not spam. That doesn't guarantee that they aren't spam. It just means that based on the scoring they probably aren't spam. Messages with a score between 3 and 9 are quarantined. Most messages in this scoring range are probably spam, but some may not be. The Barracuda quarantines these to err on the side of not allowing spam through, but you still need to look at them to decide for yourself.
Instead of quarantining email as spam and sending me a quarantine digest, why don't you just delete it?
As mentioned above, there is no foolproof way for a computer to differentiate between spam and legitimate email. If we just delete everything the Barracuda thinks might be spam, we would end up deleting some legitimate email too. We don't want to do that.
Should I report legitimate messages that are quarantined and spam messages that aren't?
We now have the ability to allow individual users to "teach" the spam filter what is and is not spam. If you believe that the spam filter is mis-identifying messages, you can easily add a sender to a whitelist or blacklist for your email account.
I'm pretty sure I didn't receive a legitimate email that I'm pretty sure someone sent to me. What can be done about that?
Those two "pretty sures" are not much for us to go on. If you know for a fact that email was sent to you but never arrived in your mailbox or did not show up in your quarantine, contact our Help Desk (410.386.4455 or help@carr.org) with specific information. We need to know your email address, the sender's email address, did the sender receive a bounce message, and approximately when the message was sent.
How does the Barracuda Spam and Virus Firewall decide how to score incoming email?
It would take a book-length email to explain that in detail, but here's a slightly shorter version:
Virus Checking - The virrus scanner examines each incoming message. Messages containing viruses are blocked and immediately deleted.
Rate Controls - This protects us from automated spam programs (spambots) that attempt to send huge amounts of email to our mail server in a very small amount of time. If this occurs the sending server is told to try again later, then disconnected. Legitimate mail servers will try again later, so legitimate email still gets through. Spam software usually doesn't bother to try again, so a lot of spam is blocked.
External Blacklists - The Barracuda uses the same externally maintained blacklists we have used for several years on our main mail server. It also uses an external blacklist maintained by Barracuda Networks that lists the largest and most aggressive spammers. All email coming from blacklisted sites is blocked.
Checksum Technology - Barracuda Networks uses "honeypot" accounts all over the Internet to keep track of how often identical spam messages are seen. If an unsolicited email has appeared very broadly it is categorized as known spam. Checksums of known spam messages are used by the Barracuda firewall to block spam messages.
Intention Analysis - This checks any URLs in the message against a database of Web sites known to be run by spammers or known to advertise via spam. If found, the message is blocked. Otherwise intention analysis looks at the apparent intent of the message. If it appears to be trying to sell you something, that affects the spam score assigned to the message.
Message Authenticity - Several methods are used to determine whether a message seems authentic. These range from attempting to verify that the "From:" address is a real address, to complex tests related to the way Internet email delivery is supposed to work. The Barracuda uses these tests to help determine what spam score should be assigned to a message.
Bayesian Filtering - This uses Bayesian analysis to compare words and phrases in a message to words and phases in previous emails, both legitimate and spam. The Barracuda uses this to help determine what spam score should be assigned to a message.
Bayesian Learning - This allows us to tell the Barracuda which messages we consider to be spam and which ones we don't in order to improve the Bayesian Filtering process.
Spam Fingerprinting - This technique compares the characteristics of each incoming email against a "fingerprint database" of known spam maintained by Barracuda Networks. The Barracuda uses fingerprinting to help determine what spam score should be assigned to a message.
Keyword Scanning - This looks for certain keywords commonly used by spammers. If found, they contribute to the spam score assigned to the message.
Is there any way I can tell the Barracuda Spam Filter what I think is and is not spam?
Yes! You may set up a personal quarantine that will allow you to classify your own mail as spam or not spam, thereby improving the Barracuda's future accuracy in classifying your email. For instructions on setting up and using the Barracuda Quarantine, see out Barracuda Quarantine User's Guide
