How It Works
Normally, when an email is sent to you, the sender's ISP looks up your MX record on a Domain Name Server. The MX information tells it where to send the email, for example, mail.your-domain.com. The ISP directs the email to that server. Once it arrives at your server, your mail software delivers it to your mailbox.

With the SpamTrap service, a change in the MX record is made so that your email is first sent to our filtering cluster where it is processed using an eight-stage system. If the email is determined to be legitimate, it is then sent directly to your mail server. If it is found to be spam, a course of action, pre-selected by the client, is taken.

Clients can choose from one of three possible actions:

•	'Tag Subject' and send to recipient
•	'Forward' to a single email address
•	'Delete' the email altogether

MX Record Change
If you are not a NetLiance client, you will need to have your ISP make this change, or move your DNS records to our system. The MX record information is provided to clients after sign-up.



Filtering Mail
Experts agree that the most effective way to fight spam includes using a combination of methods including real-time databases of known spammers, filtering based on known content, and real-time rule generation to intelligently refine systems. The SpamTrap System is just that. It uses 4 Primary Levels and 4 Secondary Levels of filtering and identification.

PRIMARY FILTERS	EFFECTIVENESS
Known URL/Phone# Filtering	85% - 90%
Plus + Proprietary Content Filtering	90% - 92%
Plus + Country blocking	92% - 95%
Plus + Real-time blacklists	95% - 99%
SECONDARY FILTERS
Global White List
Domain White List
Domain Black List	Aggressive mode
Custom Filters	Aggressive mode
Aggressive Filter System	Aggressive mode

Step 1. In the first step, SpamTrap examines emails having unique spam-fingerprints such as URLs and phone numbers of known spammers.

Step 2. In the second step, content is checked for long distinctive phrases (entire sentences) found in specific spam messages. SpamTrap does not use error-prone filtering based on single words and short phrases.

Step 3. In the third step, SpamTrap identifies all e-mail from countries that are known for sending spam. These countries include: China, Taiwan, South Korea, Brazil and Argentina. If you have clients in these countries, we can remove the name of their country from this list. We recommend, instead, that you have us add their email address to your domains White List. Think of a White List as a list of 'good' email addresses. Any email from an address appearing on your White List will not be processed by SpamTrap.

Step 4. In the fourth step, the system compares the source of the email against sources found in several "real-time blacklists" (RBL) maintained by anti-spam organizations. These lists are updated daily, and many are updated hourly, as they detect new spam.

Steps 5-8. Lastly, SpamTrap processes each email via the secondary filters which may be in place for your account. This whole process only takes less than 1 second per email.

If you require aggressive settings, we can configure Custom Filters to your specifications, and we can activate the Aggressive Filter System. Aggressive filtering is 'not' enabled by default as false positives may increase slightly. Most of our clients achieve 98% spam blocking without aggressive filtering.



Never Lose a Legitimate Email
You will never have to lose an email message with SpamTrap. By default, each email is sent to the original recipient after it leaves our system. If it is found to be spam, it is tagged in the Subject line with the tag: "z-spam:" This way, each user gets to decide how to dispose of their spam emails. Even if SpamTrap incorrectly identifies a 'good' email, it can still be retrieved from the user's email software provided the user hasn't deleted it.



3 Options for Handling Spam
In addition to the "Tag Subject" action, there are two other options for handling unwanted emails: You can elect to have them permanently deleted at the server before they ever reach your mail system, or, you can choose to have them forwarded to a single email address at your domain, e.g. spam-admin@mydomain.com. This gives you maximum flexibility in how you choose to dispose of emails identified as spam.

If SpamTrap does identify a legitimate email as spam; however, just attach that email to an email addressed to not-spam@netliancecorp.com. Remember to 'attach' the email in question as we need to examine its headers.

Note: SpamTrap is more likely to tag a good email as spam when running in the aggressive mode. This should be kept in mind when choosing an appropriate action for handling email identified as spam.



Bonus - Increased Email Reliability
Being concerned about blocking that 1-in-a-thousand email from an important prospect is understandable, but SpamTrap actually reduces the chance that you miss any email. SpamTrap uses multiple "relays" which will spool (i.e. "save") your email messages in the event your regular mail server is unreachable due to downed Internet connections, a fiber cut, or any other reason. When your mail server is back on-line, it will automatically receive the spooled email from the SpamTrap servers. Our service will spool your mail for up to five days.

This valuable service is sold separately by other companies as "E-mail backup" or "Store and Forward". It is included here at no additional charge with the SpamTrap service.



Billing, Bandwidth, and Bypass Email
Although SpamTrap pricing is based on the number of email addresses you have in your account, we reserve the right to charge extra for using bandwidth in excess of our typical rates. We consider 'typical' bandwidth of 250 megabytes/per 10 users/ month. If you have file transfers from clients that may regularly exceed this amount, we recommend you set up a special email address at your domain for those transfers, and then instruct us to have email to that address bypass SpamTrap. There is no extra charge to set up bypass email addresses.



SpamTrap is Extremely Flexible
The default settings for SpamTrap identify approximately 95%-98% of spam. At that level, SpamTrap only hits on a very small number of 'good' emails - between 1 in 1000 and 1 in 5000. Yet, no legitimate emails are lost because the default setting of "Tag Subject", instructs SpamTrap to tag spam emails and send them to the original recipient for disposition. This ensures clients get each and every email. In other words, the default settings provide clients with the best of both worlds - identifying as much spam as possible while ensuring no legitimate emails are lost.

There are instances; however, where your situation may require more aggressive filtering, or you may want us to filter your mail for viruses. Perhaps you may want mail identified as spam to be deleted at the server, or forwarded to a specific address. Our system is highly configurable and customizable. Please call us at 1-877-459-6709 to discuss how we can design a solution to meet your exact needs.



By subscribing to and/or using SpamTrap or other email filtering services provided by NetLiance, you, the Customer, accept and agree to the Terms and Conditions.