Spam Firewall FAQ 

What is the Unicom Spam Firewall?

The Unicom Spam Firewall is a spam and virus filter provided by Unicom. This new server allows the user to be in control of the content they receive in their e-mail. The server attempts to filter out unwanted or unsolicited, obscene messages and viruses from getting to your e-mail. Unicom has listened to its customers concerns and has implemented this system in an attempt to solve the problems they've described to us. We wish to provide our customers the best service possible in doing so we are providing this to our customer's free of charge.

1.      How does it work?

The Unicom Spam Firewall assigns each message a “spam rating” before it is sent to your e-mail account. Messages with a low “spam rating” are delivered to your normal e-mail account. Messages with a high “spam rating” or a virus attached are blocked from being delivered to the customer's e-mail. Messages with a moderate “spam rating” are put into a “quarantine” mailbox. This allows the customer to login to this “quarantine” account and manually take an action on the message. Actions supported are:

Whitelist – This will add the sender to a filter telling the Unicom Spam Firewall to always deliver messages from this person to your normal e-mail account. This is helpful if a message from someone you want to always receive e-mail from was mistakenly “quarantined” by the server.

Deliver – This will deliver the message to your normal e-mail account and remove it from your “quarantine” mailbox.

Delete – This will delete the message from your “quarantine” mailbox and the message will not be delivered to your normal e-mail account.

2.      Where are Quarantined messages stored and How do I access them?

When the Spam Firewall receives the first e-mail for you that it recognizes as spam, it will send you a welcome message. This welcome message will contain your username and password to login to your quarantine account. The welcome message will also contain a link that will automatically log you into your quarantine account by clicking on it. If for some reason this link does not work, you can go to http://swall.unicom-alaska.com:8000/ and login with the username and password supplied in the welcome message.

Once you've logged in to the quarantine account, you will be presented with your Quarantine Inbox. In this area you will be allowed to take action against the quarantined messages. Refer to “How does it work” to decide which action to take. If you click on the Preferences tab you'll be able to change settings on your Spam Firewall account such as:

Preferences tab, Security: You can change your password to login to the Spam Firewall. You might consider changing the password to the same are you e-mail password so its easier to remember.

Preferences tab, Quarantine Enable/Disable: This will allow you to turn on or off the quarantine mailbox. By turning it off, messages that would normally be put in the quarantine mailbox will be delivered to your normal mail account and “[QUARANTINE]” appended to the subject line of the message.

Preferences tab, Spam Filter Enable/Disable: This will allow you to turn off the spam filter completely. This will eliminate the Spam Firewall from rating your messages at all. All e-mail will be delivered to your normal e-mail account bypassing spam filtering. We recommend against doing this.

Preferences tab, Whitelist/Blacklist: This allows you to type in e-mail addresses you wish to always allow to send you e-mail or always deny sending you e-mail.

Preferences tab, Quarantine Notification: This allows you to define how often the Spam Firewall should notify you of messages in your quarantine mailbox. The options are daily, weekly and never.

3.      What if I forgot my password?

When you login using an incorrect password, you will get an error stating “Invalid username or password”. If you've forgotten your password you can create a new password for your account by going to http://swall.unicom-alaska.com:8000/. Type in your full e-mail address in the username field and click on the “Create New Password” button. The Spam Firewall will then send you an e-mail with a new password for your account. You can reset the password once you've logged in by clicking on the Preferences tab, Security.

4.      I've received a “Summary” Message in my e-mail, What is this?

The Spam Firewall will send you a daily summary of the messages in your quarantine mailbox by default. This message will contain the number of messages in your quarantine mailbox. It will list the subject of the messages, followed by an action. If you click on one of the actions, it will connect you to your quarantine mailbox automatically to delete, deliver or whitelist your messages. These “action” links have a temporary “secret key” or “password” that will automatically log you into your quarantine mailbox.

Keep in mind that any “Summary” Message over 24 hours old will no longer be valid for the purpose of automatically logging you into your quarantine mailbox. Any “Summary” message over 1 day old can be deleted. The messages listed in the “Summary” message are still in your quarantine mailbox but the “secret key” or “password” assigned to the actions of the “Summary” message are no longer valid so it will fail to log you into your account.

You can change the frequency of the “Summary” message by logging into your quarantine mailbox. Click on the Preference tab, followed by the “Quarantine Notification”.

5.      I'm receiving messages in my e-mail account with the word “[BULK]” in the subject. What does this mean?

Messages marked with a “[BULK]” subject line mean that the Spam Firewall felt they might be a spam or bulk message but the “spam rating” was high enough to warrant quarantining the message to your quarantine mailbox.

6.      I'm still receiving Spam!

As much as we would like to prevent you from ever getting a message you did not want to receive, that is not possible. No filtering product will ever be able to fully identify all bulk, unwanted or unsolicited e-mail. We will continue to update our Spam Firewall to provide the best protection possible but it will never be 100%.

7.      What happens if I do not check my Quarantine Mailbox in a long time?

Each user's quarantine mailbox has a limited amount of space. Over time the Spam Firewall will remove older quarantined messages to make room for newer quarantined messages. The Spam Firewall uses a First in First out philosophy.

8.      I don't want you filtering my e-mail!

If this is the case, you are in complete control and can turn it off by logging into the quarantine mailbox, clicking on the preferences tab, followed by the “Spam Filter Enable/Disable”. Change this setting to off, and the Spam Firewall will no longer attempt to remove unwanted/unsolicited mail from being delivered to you.