The Options tab shows generic preferences:
- The upper part contains parameters related to the general working:
- Consider spam messages with... is the minimum score to consider message as spam (higher positive values means that
a message is more likely to contain spam): this value is a threshold to let the messages through. The default of 10 is valid
for most cases.
- Automatically delete spam after... is the number of days the messages will stay on the server after the evaluation,
before being deleted automatically. The default value of 1 is safe and valid if you check your mail at least twice a day: higher values will keep your mailbox cluttered, while if you trust PostArmor blindly you can put a zero here (this means a "shot first, ask later" behaviour, as messages are deleted immediately after evaluation)
- or if score higher than... When a message passes this score, it is immediately deleted, regardless of the time it stayed
on the server. With the default value of 99, messages coming from blocked addresses (that are assigned automatically a value of 100)
will be deleted immediately too.
- Verify sender and assign a score of... if, after evaluating the message, the software has it in a "neutral"
state (i.e. it's not definitely spam, nor it's "good" mail), it's possible to make a verification of the sender, that
is, ask to the original domain if this is one of their users. This concept is quite simple (after all, you'd expect that the
answer be always positive, but this is not the case), but allows a careful screening. The value inserted here, when non-zero,
is added to the score in case of negative check (making the mail fall on the spam side) or subtracted in case of positive
check. A value of zero (default) doesn't perform the check.
CAUTION: While very useful, this option involves some network traffic, that could slow down the check itself, especially
in case the servers around the world have to search for a non-existing mail server. The best use of the option is coupled with
the automatic check (see here).
- Automatically generate a report e-mail this option generates automatically an e-mail to the user, with a report of
all the blocked messages, with the scores, every time the e-mail client contacts PostArmor. This also means that the user
doesn't have to look at the GUI to see if there are messages blocked (and potentially interesting). The report isn't
generated if no message has been blocked
- The middle part reports a list of addresses (or domains) that you receive regularly mail from: adding an address here means
that a message coming from there will pass through without any checking. The same is for whole domains (the part after the
"@"): be careful, though, when adding domains like hotmail.com or yahoo.com, as many spammers use to fake addresses
from there.
- In the lower part of the window there is also the list for the contrary, i.e. a list with domains that are always considered as
originating spam, and messages from them have automatically a very high score: there is also a list of known spammer domains that
isn't accessible by the GUI, if you feel that a domain has been incorrectly considered source of spam, let us know.
Copyright © 2002 P.Manna