This article applies to:
- MailMarshal Cloud
Question:
- What are the recommended methods to deal with false positives?
- Messages were wrongly blocked as spam
Reply:
MailMarshal Cloud has an industry leading level of accuracy in classifying spam and valid email. However, you may find that legitimate messages have been quarantined as spam (false positive), or spam messages have been delivered to users.
The following options are available to help with messages that were blocked by spam detection (or other policies) but should not be blocked, and also messages that were not properly blocked.
Some of the options allow management to be delegated to email users.
The options are listed in order from the most specific, to wider actions that could reduce anti-spam effectiveness.
Release and report as "not spam"
This is the best method to notify Trustwave of the issue. Customer administrators can take this action from the message history view in the management interface. For details, see MailMarshal Cloud Knowledgebase article Q20205.
- Messages reported in this way will be reviewed quickly.
- All submissions are considered and help to improve future detection. Trustwave cannot provide a personalized response to each submission. Trustwave does not guarantee change for any particular submitted message.
- This method does depend on user request or administrative monitoring.
Report a false negative (delivered spam)
- If the message attracted a classification, you can search for it in Message History, select it, and click Spam.
- If you use Office 365 you can easily deploy the Trustwave Spam Reporter Outlook plug-in for users. This plug-in allows users to report missed spam with one click. For details, see MailMarshal Cloud Knowledgebase article Q21067.
- To report a message that was delivered without attracting a classification, forward it to spam@trustwave.com.
- If you are subscribed to Blended Threats Protection, you can report false positive and false negative URLs using a form on the Trustwave website: https://www.trustwave.com/support/submit-URL.asp
Message digests
- Administrators can choose which classifications to digest. The "Spam - General" classification is the basic choice.
- Users can choose to release messages from a link in the digest.
- Messages that have been delivered can also be reported as "not spam" (see the article linked above).
Spam Quarantine Management
- Administrators can choose which classifications to display in SQM. The "Spam - General" classification is the basic choice.
- Users can manage mail for multiple email addresses and for other users in some cases. See help for SQM configuration and the SQM site.
End User "Safe" Lists
- The "safe senders" list is maintained in the SQM.
- A rule to apply the list to email is present in the customer package rules and must be enabled for this feature to work.
- This feature can be useful for unsolicited material that some users want, but others do not want.
Rule Exceptions
- Only make exceptions if the other options do not fix the problem.
- Limit exceptions to the rule that caused the block, and apply exceptions to as few cases as possible.
- Mail history includes logging of the rules that triggered.
- The customer's own domain should never be excluded, because spoofing of domains is a common spam and malware tactic.
- Excluding entire sender domains and "familiar trusted" domains is also discouraged, again due to spoofing risk.
Trustwave MailMarshal Cloud KB article Q21199
Last Modified: July 24, 2023