| What levels of support are available for technical and service related queries and issues? |
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| Anti-Spam Firewall technical support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you have a query or issue or require advice or assistance with any matter related to our service or your Anti-Spam Firewall system we encourage you to contact us so that we can answer your questions and provide advice or assistance when necessary. |
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| What is an MX Record? |
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The term "MX record” stands for "Mail Exchange" record". An MX record tells mail servers around the world where to send the email for your domain. These records are contained in the "zone file" for your domain on the DNS server or servers which provide DNS service for the domain. This would usually be either your own DNS servers or the DNS servers of your ISP or hosting company.
More information in setting up MX records can be found in the Setting Up Your MX Records section of the Anti-Spam Firewall Manual. |
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| How do I change my MX Record? |
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Information on modifying MX records can be found in the Setting Up Your MX Records section of the Anti-Spam Firewall Manual
If you do not have access to the DNS zone file or related configuration settings for your domain then the technical administrator of your domain, which would likely either be your ISP, web hosting provider, systems administrator or IT department should be able to modify the MX records for you.
If you require any advice or assistance with modifying the MX records for your domain to route email to your Anti-Spam Firewall system you can contact the technical support department for assistance with this. |
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| How do I find my mail servers address? |
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Use an online MX lookup tool. This will tell you your mail servers host name or IP address.
If you require any advice or assistance with determining the IP address of your mail server or with any other support or service related query or issue contact the technical support department for assistance. |
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| What if I don't know how to change my MX records? |
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| If you require any advice or assistance with modifying your MX records you can contact the technical support department. We can email you the necessary changes and you can forward this info to your ISP, hosting company, systems administrator or IT department. Otherwise, we can provide you with direct assistance if required. |
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| Can you change the MX records for me? |
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| Yes, if you require any assistance with modifying your MX records and can provide us with access to the DNS server(s) which provide service for your domain either via telnet/ssh or via a web interface control panel we can assist you with modifying your MX records. To request such assistance you can contact the technical support department. |
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| After I change my MX records how long will it take before email is being routed to my Anti-Spam Firewall system? |
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Due to distributed nature of the DNS system the MX records you have modified or set up to route email to your Anti-Spam Firewall system may not result in all email being directed to your Anti-Spam Firewall system immediately.
It may take up to 24 hours or more for the new MX information to propagate (be available to all other DNS servers) across the Internet so that all email for any given domain is directed to your Anti-Spam Firewall system. Until propagation is fully completed some email for your domain may be directed to your Anti-Spam Firewall system and some may continue to be directed to your regular email server however no email will be lost or mis-directed during this transition. |
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| How do I know if email is being processed by my Anti-Spam Firewall system? |
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| It is easy to tell if a particular email message has been processed by your Anti-Spam Firewall system. The "full headers" of email messages you receive which have been processed by your Anti-Spam Firewall system will contain the "X-SPAM-VIRUS-Scanned: Anti-Spam Firewall" tag. Note that these email headers are usually not visible unless you use the "show full headers" option in your email program. |
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| Will my email processed by the Anti-Spam Firewall system be secure? |
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Using the Anti-Spam Firewall to process your email for Spam and Viruses does not affect the security of your email in any way. The Anti-Spam Firewall system does not back up or make copies of your email and the only email messages that are stored on the system are those which have been detected as being Spam or Virus infected.
As your Anti-Spam Firewall is a dedicated unit only you will have administrative access so it is not possible for any unauthorized third party to access information associated with the email processed by your system. |
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| Do I need my own mail server to use the Anti-Spam Firewall? |
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| Generally users of the Anti-Spam Firewall system would own or have access to their own email server which would either be hosted at their office, an Internet data center, ISP or web hosting provider. However, if you do not have your own mail server it is still possible to use the Anti-Spam Firewall. You may need to speak to whomever handles the technical aspects of email related services for your domain and ask them to provide advice on how to use the Anti-Spam Firewall with your domain. |
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| Will the Anti-Spam Firewall work with any web or email hosting provider? |
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Yes, in general your Anti-Spam Firewall can process and deliver email to any web or email hosting provider or mail server anywhere on the Internet. All that you need to do is to modify the MX record associated with your domain to route email to your Anti-Spam Firewall system for processing. Information on modifying MX records can be found in the Setting Up Your MX Records section of the Anti-Spam Firewall Manual.
If you do not have access to the DNS zone file or related configuration settings for your domain then the technical administrator of your domain, which would likely either be your ISP, web hosting provider, systems administrator or IT department should be able to modify the MX records for you. If you require any advice or assistance with modifying the MX records for your domain to route email to your Anti-Spam Firewall system you can contact the technical support departmentfor assistance with this. |
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| What if my web hosting or DNS provider will not allow me to change my MX records? |
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| Most hosting companies and DNS service providers will not have a problem with assisting you to modify the MX records for your domain so that email can be routed to your Anti-Spam Firewall system for processing. However, should you encounter a problem with this we can provide you with DNS service including an easy to manage control panel access to your own domain zone files so that you can make the necessary changes to your MX records. If required, this service can be included free of charge along with your Anti-Spam Firewall system contact the technical support departmentfor more information. |
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| Is there a limit on the size of email attachments with the Anti-Spam Firewall system? |
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Internet email services were not really designed for large messages or attachments and this is why most ISP's and email service providers including Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail etc place a limit of about 25MB on attachments. The default maximum message size setting on the Anti-Spam Firewall systems for emails and attachments is 300MB which should be more than sufficient for practically any circumstances however this setting can increased if required for any reasonable purpose.
With respect to email message and attachment sizes it's important to keep in mind that the 300MB maximum setting for this on the Anti-Spam Firewall systems is much more than most Internet email servers are configured to accept and while it's a rare situation any issues will be seen with email message size and the Anti-Spam Firewall systems themselves more often what happens is that the Anti-Spam Firewall system accepts and processes emails of 100-300MB in size with no problems and then when attempting to deliver messages of this size to the destination email server they are rejected due to being over the receiving email server's size limit.
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| Does the Anti-Spam Firewall system support whitelists and blacklists? |
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| Yes, you will have full control over whitelisting and blacklisting of IP addresses, domains and email addresses which will be blocked or allowed to route email via your Anti-Spam Firewall system. Information on using the blacklisting and whitelisting functions on your Anti-Spam Firewall system can be found in the System Whitelist and System Blacklist sections of the Anti-Spam Firewall Manual |
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| Does the Anti-Spam Firewall system support RBL/Blacklists like Spamhaus and SpamCop? |
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| Yes, a number of RBL/Blacklist options are available for activation on your Anti-Spam Firewall system such as Spamhaus and SpamCop and others. Information on using the RBL/Blacklist functions on your Anti-Spam Firewall system can be found in the RBL Blacklists section of the Anti-Spam Firewall Manual. |
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| What if my mail server goes offline for some reason and is unable to accept email? |
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| In the event your mail server goes offline, your Anti-Spam Firewall system will queue or "spool" all inbound email messages. Your Anti-Spam Firewall system will queue and continually attempt to deliver the messages every few minutes for up to 5 days. When a destination email server is back online and accepting email all queued email messages should be delivered within a few minutes. If for some reason your mail server is going to be offline for longer than 5 days on all systems with the exception of the base Anti-Spam Firewall Lite edition you can increase the spooling or "Mail Queue Lifetime" period to as much as 15 days in the Advanced Settings screen of the Anti-Spam Firewall control panel.. If you have a Anti-Spam Firewall Lite edition system and you need to have the mail queue holding period extended for some reason or if you need a holding period of more than 15 days enabled on your system you can contact the technical support department..
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| Will the Anti-Spam Firewall system make backups of my email in case I need it? |
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| The Anti-Spam Firewall system does not make any backups of email messages which are processed by the system, it only acts as a secure email "gateway" system for scanning and processing your email for Spam and Viruses before being sent on to your regular mail server. The only emails which are kept on the system are those that have been blocked or quarantined by the system as having been identified as Spam/UCE or Virus infected. |
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| Does the Anti-Spam Firewall system support SSL/TLS encrypted SMTP delivery? |
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| The Anti-Spam Firewall system supports SSL/TLS encrypted SMTP delivery so if your mail server supports this as well email can be delivered via the SSL/TLS protocol if desired. |
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| What if I change my email server, ISP, hosting provider or email server IP address? |
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| This is no problem. Your Anti-Spam Firewall system is compatible with all mail servers and mail server software and can relay your email to any mail server or IP address anywhere on the Internet. All that you need to do is to log into the Anti-Spam Firewall control panel and change the IP address associated with your former mail server to that of your new mail server in the IP/Domain Setup screen. Unlike with MX records, these changes take effect immediately and your Anti-Spam Firewall system will instantly route your email to the new mail server. |
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| How do I make contact for non-technical sales or service queries and issues such as upgrading my Anti-Spam Firewall system to a higher capacity model? |
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| If you have non-technical sales or service related question or if you require advice or assistance with any matter related to our service or your Anti-Spam Firewall system we encourage you to contact us so that we can answer your questions and provide advice or assistance when necessary. |
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| How do I connect to the web interface control panel on my Anti-Spam Firewall System? |
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| Once your Anti-Spam Firewall system is online you will be contacted by our service department and provided with the IP address and login URL details to your Anti-Spam Firewall system. All that you need to do is to connect to the IP address or URL provided in your Anti-Spam Firewall setup and configuration letter and use the username and password provided to log into the control panel on your Anti-Spam Firewall system. The Anti-Spam Firewall web interface control panel is compatible with most popular web browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari and most popular handheld devices such as the iPhone and iPad as well as related operating systems such as Android. In general we recommend either Internet Explorer, Chrome or Firefox as the best web browsers to use with the Anti-Spam Firewall control panel. |
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| How do I troubleshoot or locate a missing email message? |
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If you are missing an expected email you can use the Mail Log Viewer in the control panel on your Anti-Spam Firewall system to search for information relating to the delivery of the email. Searches can be made on a variety of criteria including time and date as well as by either partial or complete email address, domain, and IP number associated with the email you are searching references for. You should also search the logs files on your own mail server as it's possible that they may contain information on the message you are looking for.
If you are unable to find the the message reference you are looking for in the Mail Log Viewer you can contact the technical support department for additional assistance with this if required. |
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| We received a Spam message that wasn't blocked by our Anti-Spam Firewall system, what can I do to block it? |
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The Anti-Spam Firewall system in it's default configuration with it's multi-layer Spam Filtering Technology and default set of Spam Scoring Levels is able to detect and block or filter up to 98% of all Spam/UCE received by the system.
The Spam Scanning & Filtering engine on the Anti-Spam Firewall system also incorporates a number of "self-tuning" and "auto-learning" mechanisms including Bayesian Analysis and Learning, which are able to automatically increase accuracy and sensitivity of the system over time.
It is possible to increase the percentage of Spam/UCE detected and either blocked, quarantined or tagged by modifying the "Spam Score Levels" in the Spamfilter Config screen of the Anti-Spam Firewall control panel. By "tuning" the system over time you will be able to achieve the optimum level of Spam/UCE detection and management for your particular email user base and the specific type and content of email messages received by your users.
For more information on tuning your Anti-Spam Firewall system to achieve the optimum level of Spam/UCE detection and management see the section on Tuning the Anti-Spam Firewall System in the Anti-Spam Firewall Manual. |
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| What do I do when an email message that is not Spam is delivered to the Spam Quarantine? |
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The Anti-Spam Firewall system is able to provide high Spam/UCE detection rates of up to 98% or more and has one of the lowest false positive ratings in the industry. In it's default configuration the Anti-Spam Firewall system is designed to minimize false positives (legitimate email messages being identified and blocked as Spam).
With no additional configuration or tuning the false positive rate is typically at less than 0.1%, or less than one in every 10,000 email messages processed by the system.
If you see email messages that are clearly not Spam being diverted to the Spam Quarantine you can prevent this from happening by either placing the email address or domain of the sender in the System Whitelist or otherwise by modifying the Spam Score Levels in the Spamfilter Config screen of the Anti-Spam Firewall control panel. By "tuning" the system over time you will be able to achieve the optimum level of Spam/UCE detection and management with the lowest possible number of "false positives".
For more information on tuning your Anti-Spam Firewall system to achieve the optimum level of Spam/UCE detection and management see the section on Tuning the Anti-Spam Firewall System in the Anti-Spam Firewall Manual. |
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| Why is an email address I have blacklisted (or whitelisted) not being blocked? (or passed, if whitelisted) |
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| Email address and domain blacklisting (and whitelisting) on systems such as the Anti-Spam Firewall is based on what is known as the "envelope sender" which would be the real sender address or domain and this can be different from the "Reply to" or "From" sender seen in an actual email message. It is this "envelope sender" address which is the one which the block or whitelisting needs to be based on. More detailed information on this can be found in the System Whitelist and System Blacklist sections of the Anti-Spam Firewall Manual. |
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| How does the Anti-Spam Firewall compare to the Barracuda Spam Firewall, are they similar systems? |
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The Anti-Spam Firewall and the Barracuda are similar systems but the Anti-Spam Firewall is a hosted email gateway appliance, which would be something like a "hosted Barracuda". This means the service is a combined fully hosted hardware and software solution. The hosting of the Anti-Spam Firewall appliance system as well as software updates, routine system maintenance and required bandwidth and data transfer are all included in the package for the one low monthly service fee, which is usually lower than the monthly license or "recharge" fees for a similar capacity self-hosted Anti-Spam appliance solution like the Barracuda.
If you purchased your own Anti-Spam type hardware appliance such as the Barracuda for instance there would not only be the one time up front payment of as much as several thousand dollars involved to purchase the unit but there would still be monthly charges ranging from around $40/month to several hundred dollars per month for their system update or "recharge" service depending on which model you purchased. With the Anti-Spam Firewall there are no up front costs and the monthly fee which includes not only things like regular automatic updates to Spam Rules and Virus Definitions as well as bandwidth and data transfer is often lower than the monthly licence or update fees for a self hosted Anti-Spam appliance.
While under some circumstances the additional up front and on going cost of a self-hosted Spam appliance system might be justified there is a general trend towards moving these sorts of services from on-premises devices such as the Barracuda to "the Cloud" both for economic reasons as well as to take the load of dealing with all of the unwanted and abusive email related traffic off of the local email server and network and also relieve IT personnel from the burden of having to constantly deal with it.
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| Can the Anti-Spam Firewall deal with "spoofed" emails that are supposedly being sent by other senders at our domain but are really Spam? |
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The "spoofing" or "forging" of the sender email address is a common tactic used by Spammers in an attempt to try and get their messages through on the assumption that many people whitelist their own email addresses or even entire domains.
On all Anti-Spam Firewall systems with the exception of the base Anti-Spam Firewall Lite model there is an Advanced Settings screen which includes an option to enable a Spoof Protection module which is able to help to deal with these sorts of messages.
If you have a Anti-Spam Firewall Lite system and don't have access to the Spoof Protection option you can contact the technical support department who may still be able to activate this on your system. |
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| What should I do if I have more questions or need technical support advice or assistance with my Anti-Spam Firewall System? |
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Anti-Spam Firewall technical support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you have a query or issue or require advice or assistance with any matter related to our service our your Anti-Spam Firewall system we encourage you to contact us so that we can answer your questions and provide advice or assistance when necessary.
You can generally expect a reply to non-urgent queries and issues within a 6-12 hour time frame depending on the day of the week with genuinely urgent matters and issues being responded or attended to within 5-15 minutes on a 24/7/365 basis.
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