As everyone who uses e-mail knows, the problems with unsolicited bulk e-mail (spam) and e-mail containing viruses continues to grow. To quantify the problem, during the week of May 21-28, 2003 , we either blocked or tagged nearly 91,000 pieces of spam. During that same period, we also captured and quarantined about 300 e-mails containing viruses.
Here is a brief summary of what Wintek is doing to assist you in managing the problem.
We have very little trouble with this, but Wintek does not condone the origination of spam by our customers. If necessary, we will suspend or terminate service to any customer who sends unsolicited bulk e-mail. Not only is spam a major problem on the Internet, but we risk having e-mail from all of our customers blocked if our mail servers get blacklisted, which has happened because of the actions of a single customer.
"Open relays", customer mail servers that are misconfigured to allow others to relay e-mail (used by spammers to disguise their real identity) are also a problem. If we discover that your mail server is an open relay, we will contact you immediately and may suspend your service to allow you the time to fix the problem. If your mail server is an open relay, the e-mail load will slow your Internet access, may crash your server, may generate thousands of "bad address" e-mails, and may associate your firm with the sale of drugs, sexual aids, pornography, etc. It will also get your server blacklisted.
If your e-mail mailbox is located on Wintek's mail.wintek.com server, Wintek attempts to block e-mail coming from known sources of spam, and scans all mail for viruses and for the characteristics of spam.
All e-mail that passes through mail.wintek.com is scanned to see if it contains a virus (using McAfee's signature file). If a virus is recognized, we quarantine the infected e-mail for a brief period on our server and send you a notification (not the virus) that we received e-mail for you containing a virus. You do not need to contact us unless you really want to see the offending e-mail.
We don't guarantee that our software will catch all viruses, so you should still maintain an up-to-date virus scanner on your computer. Our service is designed to provide an additional layer of protection.
Identifying spam with 100% accuracy is impossible. However, we utilize software that "grades" e-mail for the typical characteristics of spam that is about 99% accurate. If an e-mail fails the test, we will still deliver it to your mailbox, but we will modify the subject line to begin with the warning "*****SPAM*****".
Of the 91,000 pieces of spam that we received during that week in May, 80,000 were blocked completely (originated from known sources of spam) and 11,000 were delivered with the "SPAM" tag on the subject line.
You may read the "SPAM"-tagged mail if you wish, delete it manually without reading it, or you may use the automated features of your mail client (e.g., Outlook Express, Outlook, Netscape Communicator, Eudora) to automatically "filter" this mail. Your filter may delete all spam or may automatically put it in a folder on your computer. This last choice allows you to scan the "spam folder" if an e-mail does not arrive that you were expecting, just in case our software mistook an important message as spam.
Wintek does not charge extra for the spam and virus scanning to our customers who have mailboxes on our server.
The previous discussion of "Blocking and Tagging Spam and Viruses" is predicated on your mailboxes residing on Wintek's mail server. If you have your own mail server, most of the e-mail containing spam and viruses will be delivered directly to your mail server, bypassing the Wintek scanners.
Wintek's virus blocking and spam grading service is available to customers with their own mail server for $25/month. (For technical and other reasons, we won't block e-mail from known sources of spam, but this e-mail will be graded to see if it has the characteristics of spam.)
To utilize this service, you must have a firewall installed that will allow the blocking of SMTP requests from all but one machine. Wintek sells and maintains Cisco PIX firewalls which have this capability. Please contact us or your network consultants about obtaining a firewall or the capabilities of your existing firewall.
Using your firewall, we block direct delivery of your e-mail, forcing the mail to pass though the Wintek server security.wintek.com. After scanning, Wintek's server then delivers scanned e-mail through your firewall to your mail server. You maintain control of your mailboxes and can determine the handling of e-mail that has been tagged with the "SPAM" warning.