Disabling SpamProfiler updates

This article applies to:

• Trustwave MailMarshal (SEG)/Trustwave SEG 6.4 and above

Question:

• How can I disable the Internet update requests from SpamProfiler?

Background:

SpamProfiler uses email signatures to categorize spam. The signature files are updated by web requests.

• Database updates are retrieved frequently (many times a day). The updates are requested by the MailMarshal SpamProfiler service (Receiver service in some older versions) on each processing server.

Procedure:

Version 6.5 and above:

In version 6.5 and above, to disable updates simply disable SpamProfiler in the Configurator (Tools > Trustwave SEG Properities or MailMarshal Properties > SpamProfiler). No remote updates will occur and no spam score will be written to the "message envelope" in the .mml message file.

• Note that some email policy rules defined by default in these versions depend on SpamProfiler being enabled.

Version 6.4:

In version 6.4, disabling use of SpamProfiler in email processing DOES NOT stop the updates.

If you are not using the SpamProfiler, you can disable the internet update requests as follows:

1. On each email processing server, stop the MailMarshal Receiver service. (You can use the Windows Services control panel or the MailMarshal Configurator.)
2. Rename the SpamProfiler folder within the MailMarshal installation folder.
   • By default this folder is: C:\Program Files\Marshal\MailMarshal\SpamProfiler
   • Choose another name, such as SpamProfiler.disabled
3. Start the MailMarshal Receiver service.
4. In the Receiver log file you will see an entry similar to the following:
    
   1428 14:03:18.984 Starting SpamProfiler (C:\Program Files\Marshal\MailMarshal\SpamProfiler)...
   1428 14:03:18.984 SpamProfiler not started, cannot find directory. Disabling SpamProfiler.

• If you upgrade MailMarshal, the SpamProfiler folder will be re-created. You must repeat the steps above to disable the requests.

• SpamProfiler is also used in conjunction with the Automatic Adaptive Whitelisting feature. Completely disabling SpamProfiler reduces the Whitelisting effectiveness slightly.

• If you later choose to enable SpamProfiler, you must first enable the updates by reversing the above steps.

• Marshal strongly recommends you enable SpamProfiler. SpamProfiler significantly improves email throughput, because it greatly reduces the number of spam messages processed by the MailMarshal Engine.