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Think Outside the Inbox

spamJam: Unsolicited Email Management for Lotus Notes

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Introduction to spamJam

Information Services has selected spamJam as the software tool to control unsolicited email for Lotus Notes.

Who can use spamJam?

In order to take advantage of spamJam, you must use the Lotus Notes full client. The Notes web client can be used to view the daily message, which documents intercepted messages. The Notes web client can also view any messages captured in the spamJam Dump folder. However, the Notes web client is not able to manage the information that the daily message provides. The Lotus Notes full client is required for configuration and management of spamJam. POP3 (Eudora, Microsoft Outlook, etc) users will not be able to use spamJam. They are encouraged to use one of the numerous other solutions that are available.

How is spamJam used to manage unsolicited email?

While spamJam provides a number of features to manage unsolicited email, it does require some on-going management by each user who chooses to take advantage of this solution. Each user will need to spend some time setting the rules to meet their particular needs. The time it takes to do this will greatly diminish the longer spamJam is used. Daily review of either the log file or the daily message that contains intercepted documents will be needed to assure accuracy.

This is not a "one answer fits all" solution to managing unwanted email. However, spamJam is a tool that each Lotus Notes user can adjust to meet their personal preferences.

How do I sign up to use spamJam?

If you have an existing Lotus Notes account, and you are using the full client, a message would have been mailed to you. This is the initial offer to use spamJam for Lotus Notes. Within that message is a request button. The button will only be visible via the Lotus Notes client. Prior to clicking the request button, read the instructions carefully, and follow all requested steps. Clicking on the button sends a notification to the administrators that you are requesting spamJam. An email message will be sent to your Lotus Notes mail box, once spamJam has been enabled for you. If you no longer have the email that was previously sent, you can still request spamJam be added to your account by going to the spamJam Request page.

For those individuals who do not have a Lotus Notes account, go to our Account Request page and request a new Lotus Notes email account. Once your account has been created and installed, you will be eligible to request spamJam. If you have questions about having spamJam enabled on your Lotus Notes email account, contact the IS Computer Help Center at 472-3970.

How Do I Use spamJam?

After spamJam has been enabled for your mailbox, the following steps document the options and tools that are available.

Disabling any Current Rules/Agents that deal with Unsolicited email.

If you have previously created any Notes Mail Rules or Agents to deal with unsolicited email, you should disable them at this time. To do this, click on the Rules folder. Select all of the rules (Edit/Select All) and click the Disable Rules button. If you have questions on how to do this, or any of the other procedures contact the IS Computer Help Center at 472-3970.

Execution Security Alert window

When first using spamJam, a window may appear which is titled Execution Security Alert. There will be three options in the What to Do portion. First is Do NOT execute the action; second is Execute the action this one time; third is Start trusting the signer to execute this action. In the Details section, spamJam/IS/UNL/UNEBR or UNL NotesManager/IS/UNL/UNEBR will sign the Program. Select Start trusting the signer to execute this action. It is possible this window will appear more than once. Continue to select that option until the window ceases to appear. An example of this window is:

spamJam Mail Summary Message

Once spamJam is enabled on your Lotus Notes account, you will receive a daily message from spamJam. The daily message is the primary tool spamJam will provide you for managing your unsolicited email. The daily email message will appear in your Inbox with spamJam as the Sender. The Subject will be: "spamJam Summary for (username)@unlnotes.unl.edu since (current date). This message contains a list of messages that spamJam has intercepted. These messages will not be delivered to your mailbox unless you select them. Intercepted messages are held for 14 days before they are removed from the system. When the message is opened, the message body will be similar to:

How To Use the spamJam Summary Message?

In the first few days, spamJam may intercept messages that you REALLY want. This is because some legitimate messages have characteristics that resemble unsolicited mail. REVIEW the spamJam Summary messages daily! Review the Sender: and Subject: for each intercepted message. If you don't want any of these messages, do nothing. The messages listed in the spamJam Summary do not appear in your mailbox and will be removed from the system after 14 days.

What If I Want A Message That Has Been Intercepted?

Click on the small yellow page icon that appears on each message line. This is a document link to the intercepted messages listed in the summary. By clicking on it, you gain access to an information page on the intercepted message. Clicking on the Blue icon (Click here to view ALL messages logged by spamJam) gives access to all intercepted messages.

In the example, the yellow icon in front of the message from vmwareteam@connect.vmware.com was selected. Notice the View Message and Restore button on the toolbar.

By clicking on View Message, the actual message body is displayed:

By clicking Restore, the spamJam Restore Mail box will appear, with the following options:

Accept mail from address:

Accept mail domain:

No change

There may be multiple Accept mail from address and Accept mail from domain lines. Accept mail from address will add only the address to your allow list. Everything from both sides of the @ sign are required for the mail from address. The Accept mail from domain will add the entire domain (everything after the @ sign in the address.) Select the appropriate option.

In this example, to allow all future messages from VMware into your inbox, select Accept mail from address: vmwareteam@connect.vmware.com, and click OK. The message will be moved into your Inbox. If all you want is this particular message, select No change and click OK. To leave your configuration the way it is, click Cancel.

For the first several days of using spamJam, messages you want sent to your Inbox, may be intercepted. It will be necessary to go through the process, which was just described in order to restore them to the Inbox. This will configure spamJam to fit your particular needs. After several days of tuning, spamJam will require less time. You will still need to monitor the spamJam Summary messages on a daily basis.

spamJam Action Tool

The second management tool spamJam provides is a set of actions. These will appear in the Inbox view. Select Actions from the top menu bar. From the drop down menu choose spamJam. The various actions provided are:

Accept Selected Addresses

Accept Selected Domains

Run On Selected

Send Selected To Dump

spamJam Configuration

spamJam Log

These options appear as shown below.

spamjam Log

At any time during the day, you can view the log of intercepted messages by using spamJam log. To view the log, select Actions/ spamJam/spamJam Log. If you are expecting a message that has not arrived, this is a good place to look first. It may have been intercepted as unsolicited email, particularly if it is from someone who has not sent you email since spamJam has been enabled.

Reject/Accept Selected Addresses/Domains Tools

There are several reasons why spamJam may not intercept a message. If the sender's address or domain appears in your Sent folder, or the message does not meet the criteria set to intercept messages, then the message will be delivered. Whatever the reason, you can use the tool Send Selected to dump to add these addresses to your unsolicited email intercept list. A spamJam Dump Mail window will appear.

Use Reject Selected Domains with caution, as you may add more to your intercept configuration than you wanted. For example, if you would choose Reject Selected Domains on one address from AOL.com, you will have configured your spamJam to reject all of AOL. That may not be what you really wanted to do.

Here is how these tools work. Following is a view of an inbox:

The mail ownerdoes not want to receiveany more messages from AutoObsessn. In that case, the owner would select the message by clicking on it, (the result is shown above), and then use the Actions/spamJam/Reject Selected Addresses options to add the addresses to the intercept list.

The result is shown below:

The Actions Accept Selected Addresses and Accept Selected Domains allow mailbox owners to undo the Reject Selected Addresses and Reject Selected Addresses.

The following display would appear:

Click the Yes button to add the address back into the Allow Settings, and then you will see the following:

What is my Current spamJam Configuration?

To see your current configuration settings go to Actions/spamJam/spamJam Configuration. The first tab is the owner tab and is shown below:

Owner Tab

Disable spamJam

To stop using spamJam, first click on the Advanced button in the action menu. Now select the Disable checkbox in the top left of the Owner's screen. The image below highlights the location of the Disable checkbox. If this is checked, spamJam will no longer intercept any messages for your Lotus Notes account. You will also no longer be able to restore previously intercepted messages.

Enabling spamJam after Disabling

To re-enable spamJam, you will need to access your configuration on the server. To do this, select File - Database - Open. In the Server box, select the server your mailfile is on (UNLNOTES01, UNLNOTES02, UNLNOTES03, UNLISNOTES, or UNLNOTESORG). In the Filename box, type in sjconfig.nsf and click the Open button. See example below:

Once the database is open, under User-File Configurations, select By User. Highlight your name in the right-hand column and choose Edit Configuration from the window menu bar. Once your configuration is open, uncheck Disable and Save and Exit.

Delegating spamJam Responsibility

The remaining information is about your Lotus Notes email account. The Notes Administrator has completed this information when spamJam was activated for your mailbox. If you wish to delegate maintenance of your unsolicited email configuration to someone else, click on the Select button below the Responsible Notes User: line. Select the responsible person from the Notes Addresses book. This individual will also need to have appropriate access to your mailbox, through the Tools/Preferences/Delegation settings.

Set Icon on the Owner Tab

Messages that arrive in the Inbox can be marked by icons to identify how spamJam allowed the message to be delivered to the Inbox, rather than being quarantined in the log. An example of a flagged message is below:

In this example, spamJam has marked the messages with a question mark icon. This indicates that the message passed all of spamJam's tests, and it is now the individual's turn to determine whether it is unwanted email. There are six categories of messages to which spamJam can assign icons. To set the icons, select Actions/spamJam/spamJam Configuration. Then click on the Set Icons button on the bottom, left side of the Owner tab:

The options for setting icons include: Passed All spamJam Tests, Notes Mail, Subscribed From Address or Domain, Allowed From Address in Sent Mail, Allowed From Address or Domain, and Allow Phrase in Subject. To select or change the icon, click on the gray, square button to the left of the spamjam code and description. This will open a window that will allow you to select from a list of 73 different icons. See an example below:

Subscriptions Tab

The Subscriptions tab is a handy way to manage mail from listserv and other types of distribution lists. It gives a way to move these messages directly to folders without having to write your own Mail Rule or Agent.

If you currently are using Mail Rules or Agents to accomplish this task, disable them before using this feature. The Subscription view tab is shown below.

To have the mail subscription automatically moved to a specific folder, do the following.

Enter the From: address of the subscription in the Address or domain: box.
Enter the destination folder in the Destination Folder box, or click on the Folder to view a list of your folders and make your selection. If the folder does not exist, you may enter the desired name, and the folder will be created when the first message is delivered.
Click the Add button. Your entry will be added to the Subscribe Address List box.

Here is an example of how this screen will look after an entry is written that will route messages from is-sys@listserv.unl.edu to the is-sys folder:

Likewise, these entries can be deleted. This example deletes the entry that was created above. This is what will appear when the Delete button is clicked and the "is-sys" entry is selected. Upon clicking on OK, the rule is deleted.

Allow Tab

The Allow tab lists the collection of addresses that are allowed through spamJam.

Allow mail from addresses in Sent mail specifies whether spamJam should initially allow incoming mail from addresses that appear in the Sent folder.

Learn Allow Addresses from Sent mail specifies whether spamJam should add any new addresses to the allow list.

It is recommended that both options be checked. All addresses currently allowed are listed in the Allow Addresses box. While you may edit this list, it is much simpler to use other features to manage this information.

Allow Phrases Tab

Since there is no initial Deny Phrases feature in the initial spamJam configuration, the information under this tab is not configurable by a user. This view is provided just for informational purposes:

Deny Tab

The information under this tab is an accumulation of the addresses you have chosen to deny. It is shown below:

Options Tab/Extensions

The information under this tab is not user-configurable. This view is provided for informational purposes only:

Deny Phrases Tab

The options under this tab allow each user to configure a personal deny list of undesired message content.

In the Subject/From Phrases box enter any words or phrases, one word or phrase per line, which you do not want to see as a Subject: or From: in you Inbox.

In the Body Phrases box enter any words or phrases, one word or phrase per line, which you do not want to see in a message body.

The Subject/From Phrases Lookups and Body Phrases Lookups boxes provide a means to select this information from another Notes database.

Blacklists Tab

The information under this tab is not user-configurable and is provided for informational purposes only.

Disposition Tab

The information under this tab is not user-configurable and is provided for informational purposes only.

Initial Configuration

Initially, unsolicited email management will not intercept the following messages:

All messages from addresses that appear in your Sent Mail
All messages from unl.edu and Nebraska.edu hosts
Messages from certain known UNL vendor hosts (tandt.com, etc)

It will intercept messages that match these characteristics:

Self-Addressed mail
Mail with an unavailable From: address
Mail with an all upper case Subject: line
Mail with encoded host references in the message body
Mail with repeated non-alphanumeric characters in the Subject: line
Mail with a totally non-alphanumeric Subject: line
Mail addressed to over 32 recipients
Mail addressed to multiple recipients, with the four left-most characters repeated
Mail with inconsistencies between From:, Replied To: and originator addresses

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Related Links

spamJam: Unsolicited Email Management for Lotus Notes

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Introduction

Using spamJam Actions Tool

What is my Current spamJam Configuration?

Introduction to spamJam

spamJam Action Tool