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GFI Mail Essentials (Server Anti Spam Software)

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Posted by: wead

I just have to say that GFI Mail Essentials is the best **** anti spam program for servers. The Bayesian Analysis works great. The DNS Blacklist works great. I work for this company and before I came they were getting 500 spam e mails in their in-box a day (and GFI was installed) then I set it to learn off the outbound e mails for a while (bayesian filter) and as soon as I got enough HAM e mails I activated it and BAM. 90% of spam stopped. Take note people who work for companies with programs like this : If you have auto whitelist on and you have trend scanmail for MS Exchange it will add all the senders of the virri to your WHITELIST!
The thing to do is :
1. Turn off Auto Whitelist
2. Weed through the whitelist created.
3. Goto the GFI Mail Essential Reporter.
4. Set it to print out domain statistics on the screen, set it to base it on # of e mails and set it to outbound only and BAM you got all the major players that the company e mails.
5. Goto NOTEPAD (old school) and based on how many e mails that people in your company/network send to particular domain addresses add them to the whitelist as *@whatever.com, well first put em in notepad and then transfer em. It really does not take that long but weeding out the bad e mail addys takes a long *** time. Even if you add the bad domains to the blacklist, if they are on the whitelist it bypasses it (which sucks). However, if you are a lazy systems admin and don't have jack **** to do because you did it all it is a great way to kill time. Go hide in the server room and spend all day tweaking the configs, printing reports to show the boss, sleeping, whatever man its all good (except sleeping).

I give GFI mail essentials 10/10.

Since I fixed that auto-whitelist error and activated the bayesian anaylisis filter spam is now down to 3 or 4 a day from 500 -1000 a day. We only have like 20 e mail mailboxes in the company yet we get over 10,000 spam e mails a month. Its insane.10,000 no joke. I got the reports in front of me. Ridiculous.

For all of you that are like WTF is this dude writing about "Bayesian what the ****". A bayesian anaylisis basically learns from outbound e mail (Its Artificial Intelligence in a way) and based on the percentages of words that are in Legit e mail or HAM and SPAM it decides if something is spam. Don't understand check it : Lets say Jimmy works for a sporting goods company... People say the word DEAL a lot in legit e mails to him, most spam software would be like : oh snap the word deal is in there it HAS to be spam. The Bayesian filter (after allowing it to read 3000 or so outgoing e mails before starting it for real) actually learns the words that Jimmy uses so it knows that when someone e mails him : "Yo Jimmy I got a great deal on some basketballs" it knows it is spam BUT if a spam e mail is like "We got the biggest deals on viagra and percocets" it will know it is spam... I bet your wondering "How in the ****?". Well because the words percocets and viagra were in the e mail even though the word deal was in the e mail (which usually would make it HAM to any other crap spam program) because viagra and percocets were in there (two known spam terms) it overrides the one word of DEAL and decides it is spam.
Its a lot more complicated than that but thats the gist of it.
There is one flaw with the bayesian filter tho, spammers know about it so they put in words that normally wouldn't be in spam to throw it off and it works sometimes, but out of every other filter and setting out there today the bayesian anaylisis filter is the best.




If you don't own a company or network and you use Outlook to read e mail and you get a lot of spam you can use the RULES WIZARD to detect the spam when it arrives and send it back to **** (or to the spam folder under your inbox). Its under the tools menu and it is in most outlooks(defnatly in express, for 97 it is somewhere else and called something else, I think in properties or whatever). If you want some pointers reply and I will be more than happy to give yall my advice. I am also happy to take any advice you would have to give me.

TERMS USED :
WHITELIST : Trusted E mail address List
BLACKLIST : Spam E mail address List
HAM : Legit e mail
SPAM : Duh.

Anyone know what HAM actually stands for I forgot.

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