SPAM and AntiVirus Filtering

Our virus definitions and SPAM filters are constantly updated and the filtering is done at at the main servers, which means that the bad email will never even hit your account!

Clam AntiVirus
Scans incoming email and attachments for viruses identified in the OpenAntiVirus database. Emails identified as infected are deleted before they reach your inbox.

The main purpose of this software is the integration with mail servers (attachment scanning). The package provides a flexible and scalable multi-threaded daemon, a command line scanner, and a tool for automatic updating via Internet. The programs are based on a shared library distributed with the Clam AntiVirus package, which you can use with your own software. Most importantly, the virus database is kept up to date .

SpamAssassin
Scans incoming email with a variety of heuristic tests to identify and tag potential spam. Mail clients and webmail can delete or filter the tagged spam to any folder you choose.

The spam-identification tactics used include:

header analysis: spammers use a number of tricks to mask their identities, fool you into thinking they've sent a valid mail, or fool you into thinking you must have subscribed at some stage. SpamAssassin tries to spot these.

text analysis: again, spam mails often have a characteristic style (to put it politely), and some characteristic disclaimers and CYA text. SpamAssassin can spot these, too.

blacklists: SpamAssassin supports many useful existing blacklists, such as mail-abuse.org, ordb.org or others.

Razor: Vipul's Razor is a collaborative spam-tracking database, which works by taking a signature of spam messages. Since spam typically operates by sending an identical message to hundreds of people, Razor short-circuits this by allowing the first person to receive a spam to add it to the database -- at which point everyone else will automatically block it.

Once identified, the mail can then be optionally tagged as spam for later filtering using the user's own mail user-agent application.

SpamAssassin requires very little configuration; you do not need to continually update it with details of your mail accounts, mailing list memberships, etc. It accomplishes filtering without this knowledge, as much as possible.