St. Olaf has adopted the Barracuda Spam Firewall to help reduce unsolicited bulk e-mail. Barracuda is an easy-to-use web-based program that quarantines (isolates) messages it believes to be spam and gives you the opportunity to review these messages and ultimately decide whether to allow or block them.
An Overview of the Spam Firewall
What is Spam?
Spam, also known as "junk mail," is bulk advertising that is sent without the user's permission. It is potentially dangerous because malicious users often disguise spam messages as e-mails from legitimate sites in order to gather personal information from you. Because of this, it is important to be proactive in reviewing quarantined messages on a regular basis and determining whether or not they are legitimate.
How does the Barracuda work?
The Barracuda uses several processes to analyze your incoming e-mail messages and determine whether or not they are spam. Although the system is usually accurate, occasionally it will mark legitimate messages -- often times "special offers" from mailing lists you have subscribed to -- as junk mail. Therefore, it is a good idea to check your quarantine periodically to make sure you aren't missing any legitimate mail.
Checking your Quarantine
Daily Spam Summary
The quarantine is a special area on the server where suspect mail is stored until you either approve or delete it. Every morning at about 4:00 A.M., all users receive a "Spam Quarantine Summary" from the e-mail server (see illustration below). This message lists all the e-mail from the past 24 hours that the system identified as spam and placed in the quarantine.
Figure 1: A Spam Quarantine Summary e-mail message
Accessing your Quarantine
Now that you know what messages the system identified as potential spam, it's up to you to decide what to do with them. To access your personal quarantine, do one of the following:
- At the bottom of the "Spam Quarantine Summary" e-mail mentioned above, there is a link that reads:
To view your entire quarantine inbox or manage your preferences, click here.
Clicking on the link will automatically log you in and take you to the quarantine.
- If you misplaced your summary e-mail or wish to access the quarantine away from your mail, you can go to https://barracuda.stolaf.edu/ in a web browser, such as Firefox or Internet Explorer (be sure to include the 's' after http -- doing so makes sure you are on a secure connection).
Dealing with Suspect Messages
Your Options
Once you're in the quarantine window, you will observe that next to each suspect message is three options:
- Deliver removes the message from your quarantine and allows it to be delivered to your e-mail account.
- Whitelist places the sender of the message on a "whitelist," or special list of senders from which e-mail will always be allowed.
- Delete removes the message from the quarantine and does not deliver it to your e-mail account.
Figure 2: Spam Quarantine Window
Notice that to the left of each message is a checkbox. If you wish to perform an action on more than one message at a time, mark the checkbox next to each message and click on one of the action buttons near the top of the screen.
Changing your Preferences
The Barracuda's preference pane provides a variety of user-configurable options that allow you to customize the way the system works for you. You most likely won't need to deal with the majority of them, but it is important to understand the whitelist and blacklist. You may also wish to change your notification interval.
Figure 3: Barracuda's Preference Pane
A whitelist is a special list of allowed senders. The box in the image above allows you to manually add an e-mail address to this list. For example, if you have a close friend who you know will never send you junk mail, you can add her address to the whitelist. This helps ensure that her messages will never be accidentally classified as spam.
A blacklist is just the opposite. If you keep getting spam messages from the same address, add it to the blacklist so the system will automatically block all messages sent from it.
Notification Interval
By default, the Barracuda sends you a message listing all of the messages in your quarantine every morning. If you wish to change this interval, click on the "Quarantine Settings" tab of the preference area. The following screen will appear:
Figure 4: Quarantine Settings
"Daily" is the default option, but you may also choose "Weekly" notification. "Never" is not recommended unless the mailbox is a St. Olaf alias and it never receives mail from outside the College.
If you have more questions about using Barracuda, please contact the Helpdesk at x3830 or e-mail helpdesk@stolaf.edu.
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