Spam FAQ

As a valued user of our hosted spam filtering service, we've assembled the following list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) to address some of the concerns we've received.

If you have a concern that is not addressed in this FAQ, please contact Phoenix Technology Solutions via email at support@ptsmn.com, or call us at 952.943.1632.

NOTE: Please do not forwarded your quarantine reports to Phoenix support. This causes the filter to examine the message and due to keyword filters in place can flag your email address as a spammer. This may cause several days before any message you send other hosted spam users (including Phoenix users) to come through without delay.

If you have a concern regarding an email message, please send us a message with the following:

• Email address of the sender

• Your concern (sender or their organization needs to be allowed or blocked)

Once we receive your request we will follow up as quickly as possible.
 

Why am I not getting all of my email?

As part of the spam filtering process your email appeared to the spam filter that it was a spam message rather than a “normal” email. All of your mail that is identified as spam gets saved at our data center so your mail isn’t lost. Our spam filter does a great job at detecting most spam messages. About 90% of all mail that passes through our mail filter is spam. Of the nearly 10% of the mail that isn’t spam there is some potential for mail to be perceived as spam when it is not. We want as few false positives as possible and we are committed to resolving them as quickly as possible. The following questions should help you and us resolve these issues very fast.

How can I get my mail out of the quarantine?

The easiest way is to look at your Quarantine report that gets sent to you from our spam filter and release the valid email. It will then deliver to your inbox. Most of our clients get the report daily but we can change it to hourly if you are concerned about missing a more timely email.

Can I view a sample Quarantine report?

Certainly! Please visit http://www.ptsmn.com/spam_sample.htm

Should I release or release and report? What’s the difference?

Release just sends the message to your mailbox.

Release and report delivers it to your mailbox and also sends a notification to our filter that this particular piece of email is not spam.

What happens then is that the mail gets indexed and added to the spam filter software so that messages that fit this criteria in the future don’t get marked as spam. Release and report does not make it so that any email from the sender gets delivered through. That process is known as white-listing.

Do I really need to do a release and report?

Yes. It is very important that you release and report as that is how the filter “learns” what is and isn’t spam. The spam filter has spam patterns much the same way that your antivirus software has virus patterns. The more data the filter has about what is and isn’t spam the more accurate it gets. The only reason to do a simple release is if you don’t want our spam filter to “learn” that messages that are similar to this are not spam. Releasing without reporting is helpful for things such as newsletters and the like.

I did a release and report and I’m still seeing mail in the quarantine that shouldn’t be there. What’s going on?

The release and report process can take a little bit of time to get all the way through the “learning” process. It can take from just a few minutes to up to a day to have the filter learn the behavior and get itself updated. The spam filter gets up to 30 updates per hour so it is always learning. See below about whitelisting if you have mail from the same address(es) appearing in your quarantine on a regular basis.

I'm still getting some spam in my inbox, or a message I have selected release and report is in my quarantine report. What else can I do?

Any spam that you may receive in your inbox (newsletters or any other piece of mail that properly announce the sender and have an unsubscribe line are not considered spam) can be forwarded to us at spam@ptsmn.com

Likewise, any legitimate email that is being caught in the quarantine and should be allowed through can be forwarded to us at notspam@ptsmn.com

These accounts monitored by staff of human beings that solely adjust the spam definitions for ensure that the right types of emails are allowed or blocked.

What happens if I’m expecting a critical piece of email and I haven’t received it in a timely manner?

If you are expecting a piece of email that is critical in nature you can call Phoenix Technology Solutions at 952.943.1632. All of our engineers know how to look through the quarantine on the filter and get your mail released. We also can submit the message to be added to the spam filter’s pattern.

I have several people/clients/domains that are constantly getting stuck in my quarantine. How can this be resolved?

The best way to address this is for us to add the affected email addresses or domains into the whitelist. The whitelist will allow mail to come into your mailbox from any of the addresses or email domains without being filtered for spam at all. The only caveat with the whitelist is that there is a potential for a spammer to “spoof” or fake the email address which could cause your spam received to go up. This is rarely an issue, but if we do put items in the white list for you and your spam level starts increasing we may need to do some further investigation.

We have also found that some senders have issues with sending to more than just clients that use our spam filter. Sometimes they could be on what’s called a “black list” which is the opposite of a “white list” or have their email servers configured improperly. If you have contacts or clients that have issues similar to this we would be happy to help them out!