How to Use the Barracuda Spam Filter and Outlook Plugin
Background
The Barracuda Spam Firewall is a device that sits in between the internet and your email server. It intercepts all incoming email and scans it for viruses and objectionable material (spam) before delivering message on to your Inbox. The Barracuda is able to quarantine messages that it recognizes as spam, which helps keep your Inbox nice and clean. Right out of the box, the Barracuda is usually able to block about 80% of all spam coming into your account. This number can be increased by "training" the device to better recognize spam as well as to recognize your list of "allowed senders" (also know as a "whitelist").
The Barracuda will send you reports every morning detailing the messages it has quarantined. You will want to keep the quarantine clean so that you can spot any legitimate messages it may have accidentally trapped.
Accessing the Spam Filter
The spam filter can be accessed in two ways. The first is by clicking on the link at the bottom of your daily quarantine report from the Barracuda. The second method is to access the Barracuda directly at: http://filter.helpinghandpc.com.
Login to the Spam Filter
If you clicked on the link above (instead of using the link in your quarantine report email) you'll be prompted to login to the spam filter. Your username is your email address, and if you don't know your password, you should pay special attention to the lower part of the image below. Most Helping Hand PC customers will have an email sent to them that includes their password at the time their domain is set up on the system, so you should look for the first message from the Barracuda in your Inbox.
What is in the Spam Filter?
Once you are logged into the Barracuda you will see a list of emails that are Quarantined. Items that are quarantined are messages that our spam filter thinks are not fit to deliver to your Inbox. It's your job to teach the Barracuda if it made the right decision or not.
How to Manage the Spam Filter's Quarantine
The four options highlighted in the picture below are the main controls for managing the contents of the quarantined emails.
- Deliver: Removes the selected messages from quarantine, and delivers them to your Inbox.
- Whitelist: Flags the sender(s) of the selected messages as "safe" and delivers all future messages from that sender directly to your Inbox (and therefore not into the Barracuda). However, the current message will be left in quarantine.
- Whitelist/Not Spam: Does the same as the Whitelist button, but also tells Barracuda to try to intelligently find other messages that are similar and deliver those also.
- Delete: The Barracuda will eventually delete emails that are not handled manually (after 30 days), but this button will do it for you immediately. Note, once it's deleted from quarantine you can NEVER get it back.
How to Teach the Spam Filter What is and is NOT Spam
Handling the mail that is currently in quarantine is different than handling mail that will come into the filter. You can increase the Barracuda's ability to correctly figure out which emails get through to your Inbox by "teaching" the spam filter with the buttons highlighted below:
- Classify as Spam: This button teaches the spam filter that the message in question is indeed spam, and then also deletes the message.
- Classify as Not Spam: Teaches the spam filter that the message is definitely NOT spam, but also delivers the mail.
These two buttons are the most useful (and therefore the most used) of all.
Using the Outlook Plugin INSTEAD of the Web Interface
The Barracuda includes a small plugin that you can use from inside of Outlook to mark messages as spam or not-spam. You can install the plugin yourself by using this link (Barracuda Outlook Plugin Installer) and installing the downloaded program.
After you've installed the Outlook plugin you can use the green checkmark to Whitelist the sender of the selected message and the red "X" to classify the selected message as "Spam" and move it to your Deleted Items folder.
Help
If you have issues or questions with any of the instructions here, please don't hesitate to contact us. In most cases, we will be able to help you remotely.
