Canadian Webhosting Forums

[john]

I've done a bit of looking at cwh and also at Barracuda (which I see is what cwh has implemeted). I also know that spam/virii detection and handling is rock+hardplace for every legitimate user/provider. And I also know _for_certain_ that there is no such thing as a 100% guarantee against false positives - this absolutely requires an option to enable explicit checking by the final recipient.

So what does cwh do: silent delete? notify+delete? quarantine+notify? other? and is this user configurable?

Thanks in advance.

[kevin]

Yes, you are correct there is no 100% guarantee against false positives.

For customers who are afraid of losing their emails, we provide them with an opt-out of the Barracuda spam/virii filtering. They can then configure the SpamAssassin within the control panel and ClamAV for virii filtering.

It's quarantined and customers will need to contact us if they are not receiving emails and we can check the logs and pull them out.

[john]

Great. It is terrific to have the opt out choice available and to have suspect mail quarantined and not just silently deleted.

But your comment:

... customers will need to contact us if they are not receiving emails ...

doesn't seem clear to me (probably my fault). How does a customer know when they are not receiving emails?

Sometimes it can be obvious when mail is not being received (e.g. lists) but the situations where it is not obvious (eg new customers, friends I haven't met yet, ...) seem more important somehow. So, is there a way for a customer to have direct access to quarantined mail?

Thanks.

[kevin]

Hi,

Unfortunately, we do not provide clients access to the quarantined mail.
However, we can change the default scoring to be less aggressive. The side effect is more spam.

There is not way to know if they are not receiving mail. The same can be said with the internet in general. Mail gets lost in transit daily due to filtering at different points between the sending client server and the receiving mail server.

[john]

I have reread your comments carefully because not losing false positives is a deal breaker for me (different strokes for different folks and all that:).

You said

For customers who are afraid of losing their emails, we provide them with an opt-out of the Barracuda spam/virii filtering. They can then configure the SpamAssassin within the control panel and ClamAV for virii filtering.

which seems to say that I could request that cwh not check my email for spam or malware and then I'd just have to deal with these myself on my own machine here. Is that correct? (I do that now, so it'd be no additional problem for me.)

Also, I had a look at your control panel demo. I see the SpamAssassin item but I don't see anything for ClamAV. Am I correct in assuming that ClamAV would run on my machine here and not on your machine?

Thanks.

[kevin]

Hi,

Yes, that is correct. We can disable it and you can process it locally.

ClamAV does not have any control panel. It's installed on our servers actively scanning for virii.

[john]

cwh said that ClamAV is:

installed on our servers actively scanning for virii.

Is cwh able to configure an account such that all email for a specific domain completely bypasses the ClamAV scanning on your servers?

[admin]

Yes, this can be bypassed.

[kevin]

We are now offering Barracuda access to individual email accounts so people can control their own quarantine, whitelist, etc.

It is $7.95/mo per email account.
10 meg quarantine space, 30 day retention.

This allows the user to login to Barracuda and view quarantined messages. They can also update their own Bayesian filter based on their emails.

[Howard Kaplan]

On February 8, Kevin wrote

We are now offering Barracuda access to individual email accounts so people can control their own quarantine, whitelist, etc.

It is $7.95/mo per email account.

Is that charge per email address within a domain or is it per domain? The word "Account" gets used two different ways in cPanel: it tells me that I have 11/50 Email Accounts allocated, but it also distinguishes between User level filtering and Account level filtering.

Also, for those people who do not want to configure their own spam filter settings, is there any public information about the default Barracuda filters that are enabled? This might help users understand what gets filtered out even if they don't want to take the trouble to change what gets filtered out.

Finally, the Standard Hosting Plans page at http://www.canadianwebhosting.com/standard_hosting.asp lists something called "ASSP (Email Spam and Virus Filtering)". Is that the same as Barracuda, or is the product name on that page obsolete?

[kevin]

Hi,

This is an optional spam filtering service separate from what you see in cPanel. It is $7.95 per each email account.

cPanel has its own spam filtering service. But for people who want more enterprise level filtering, this is another solution.

Kevin

[peakydh]

Hi,

This is an optional spam filtering service separate from what you see in cPanel. It is $7.95 per each email account.

cPanel has its own spam filtering service. But for people who want more enterprise level filtering, this is another solution.

Kevin

Hi there,

should you use both spam filtering services together or just choose one or the other.

Cheers.

[scott]

Hello,

No.. there is no need for two spam filters at the same time.

If you wish to go for the enterprise level filtering, there is no need for cPanel spam filtering. But by default it will be available on cPanel.