From:                                                       J.R. [jr@advantage77.com]

Sent:                                                         Tuesday, December 04, 2012 7:20 PM

To:                                                            'kyle McCammack'; 'Doug Prall'; bob_mcgill@hdsdrivers.com; Danny_Young@HDSDrivers.com

Cc:                                                             'Doug Baker'; 'Anthony Valdez'

Subject:                                                   avast! AntiSpam Filter for Outlook

 

avast! AntiSpam Filter for Outlook

 

When you open Outlook, you will see the avast! AntiSpam toolbar on the left, 3rd line down. There are 3 different types of email, and each has a unique way to be correctly dealt with, using your avast! AntiSpam toolbar in the Microsoft Outlook mail client. 

 

1)     SPAM (unsolicited email, you did not sign up, you never heard of them) 

 

2)     SOLICITED email (you signed up for it, and you are now on a mailing list, whether you like it or not)

 

3)     CORPORATE email (the email you use to communicate with employees and vendors.  This is your real reason for your corporate email account, so you can do your job)

 

SPAM emails

 

When you check your email with Outlook, avast! will automatically check all incoming emails against the SPAM database in the cloud, before carrying out additional heuristics and other checks to identify other potential SPAM.  A message *avast spam* will be inserted into the subject line of all suspected SPAM messages, and they will be moved in your “Junk” mail folder.  

 


Many of these are from Organized Crime and Terrorists, in an attempt to get you to click on a malicious website so that they may infect your PC.  The most common “gotcha” in the USA is the offer of the free iPad.  When these are found in your inbox, DO NOT open these emails, as they may contain malicious code, and they “Gotcha” can occur by just opening the email.  Best is to highlight the email and click the SPAM button!

 

Notice the top email (below), who is a person I know very well and went to school with.  Her name was harvested from Facebook, or gmail, or ??? and sent to me, because I was in her contact list.

 


Notice the email address is not even Patricia’s:  deeshollis@yahoo.com.  This email is a phishing expedition, and MUST be marked SPAM.  This way, it is entered into the Spam / national Blacklist in the cloud.  Now avast! will have an opportunity to create a definition / algorythm to try and stop these in the future.

 

SOLICITED emails

 

These are the emails that we signed up for at some point, and we are now on a distribution list. When solicited emails are no longer desired, it is best to highlight the email, and press the BLACKLIST button on the Spam bar.  This will add the sender to your local blacklist, and all emails from this sender will automatically be moved to the “Junk” folder.  These is much easier than trying to find out how to unsubscribe to that mail list.  Also, many unscrupulous Webmasterse can add you to several different email lists, and the problem gets worse when you “unsubscribe”.  So, just mark these emails as BLACKLIST.

 

CORPORATE emails

 

The worst thing about SPAM filters are, when you know you want the email, you verify again with the sender that they sent the email, and it is still NOT in your Inbox.  Sometimes SPAM filters will inadvertantly grab these emails, and move them to the “Junk” email folder without your knowledge. It is best to monitor your “Junk” mail folder occasionally to verify that all “Junk” email is in fact junk.  This is very rare scenario, but it does occur.  If you find email in “junk” folder that you wish to receive, then highlight that email, and select WHITELIST from the Spam bar.  This will automatically add the senders email address to your local Whitelist, and you will now always receive email from that sender.  The email is  now restored  to your Inbox.  The WHITELIST function will over ride the SPAM button, and will over ride the BLACKLIST button, so it is the most powerful.  Regulary check and delete your “Junk” folder.

 

Your avast Spam filter will already be configured to auto add all your email recipients to your Whitelist, and add your contact list to your Whitelist.  Your avast! email heuristics will already be set to High.  Occasionally you will notice an email that you previously marked as SPAM, will again make it to your Inbox.  When this is observed, it is best to mark that email as BLACKLIST on the 2nd time you see it.  Now it is on both lists (Spam and Blacklist) and increases your chances of not seeing it again. If you have any further questions about your avast Spam filter, you are welcome to contact me with your concerns.

 

SPAM moves messages to “Junk” and places email in the Spam database at avast! for further analysis, so they get better at it!

 

BLACKLIST moves email to “Junk” and adds sender to you local Blacklist and blocks all email from that sender (this can be undone using Whitelist)

 

WHITELIST moves message from “Junk” to Inbox and adds sender to your local Whitelist (over rides Spam, over rides Blacklist, so most powerful)

 

NOT SPAM is only incase you accidently mark a good email as Spam, so you can undo it.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

J.R. Guthrie

President

Advantage Micro Corporation

520-290-0595

 

"antivirus, as we know it, is DEAD!"