ANS Spam Plus utilizes three
layers of protection to analyze each piece of email
and to detect and act on suspected spam.
Blacklisting: ANS
uses a proprietary blacklist. We do
not use commercial blacklists such as MAPS and ORBZ/S.
Most commercial
and public blacklists follow a "guilty until
proven innocent" approach, which frequently
blocks email from legitimate senders. Our blacklist
contains
only
the addresses
of the most egregious spammers on the Internet. While
conservative, our blacklist can immediately block
nearly 10 percent of
our customer's inbound spam.
Fingerprinting: Messages
not blocked by blacklisting are fingerprinted to
detect matches with known spam
message characteristics.
ANS's fingerprinting technology leverages knowledge
gained from filtering mail for our entire customer
base. The fingerprinting
database aggregates data from all spam blocked
by our system allowing the fingerprinting process to
become
more intelligent
and refined as more mail is processed.
Messages
identified as spam are fingerprinted and given a unique
id based on their content. If these
messages
come
through our system again, the fingerprint is
detected and the message is marked as spam.
Messages are analyzed to determine new spamming
methods (i.e., base64-encoded spam). Once determined,
a dedicated
spam team
modifies our scoring layer on the fly to catch
spam using the same method.
Rules-based scoring: Scores are assigned to messages
based on more than 20,000 rules that embody and define
characteristics of spam and legitimate email. Points
are added to the score if a message contains characteristics
of spam; and points are subtracted if it contains many
characteristics of legitimate email. When a message's
score reaches a defined threshold, it is flagged as spam.
Message characteristics we evaluate and score include:
- Phrases in the body and subject of the message
- Formation
of headers (i.e., Message-ID, Received, random characters)
-
Originating mail server / Originating mail agent
- From and SMTP From address
Spam Treatment
Most customers choose to quarantine messages identified
as spam outside their network. Quarantined messages
are stored and deleted after 15 days. Customers can
review quarantined messages and retrieve improperly
blocked messages through SpamShark, a Web-based tool.
Unlike
most competitors, ANS Spam Plus has a very low incidence
of blocking legitimate email - less than one
for every 250,000 emails received (less than 0.0004
percent).
As an alternative to quarantining messages,
ANS Spam Plus also allows spam to be sent through to
customers.
When ANS Spam Plus forwards spam, it can modify the
message to flag it for internal review. Modifications
can include:
- Inserting an X-header for filtering inside
the perimeter
- Inserting a new subject line message
(i.e., < This
is spam >)
- Directing spam
to an internal SMTP mailbox
Benefits
Automatic spam filtering – No user interaction is required; and
it is not necessary to set up of individual accounts
Highly accurate filtering – Legitimate business email is
not blocked.
No white listing – Highly granular and accurate spam filtering
technology eliminates the need to white list approved mail senders.
Hassle-free quarantine – Spam quarantined in SpamShark can
be reviewed through the Web-based SpamShark interface; quarantined
spam automatically expires after 30 days and is deleted.
Improved network efficiency – Eliminating spam outside your
network reduces the load on mail servers and results in network
usage and storage savings.
contact
us today
to learn more about ANS Spam Plus.
ANS Mail | Exchange
Hosting | ANS Spam Plus |
