Fighting Spam

Every day it seems like more spam gets sent out by criminals looking to scam somebody. They are also constantly changing their tactics to get around spam filters. While the overall volume changes every day, we continuously see a high volume of spam that gets caught. Unfortunately, some of that spam also makes it into your inbox. It also takes a few days for our spam filter to catch up to the newest techniques that the spammers are inventing.

Mark Email as Bad

Sometimes more spam than usual might end up in your inbox. You can do a few things to help in the fight against spam. The first thing is to mark the email as bad. You can do this by opening the message at https://webmail.itctel.com, clicking the Mark button, and selecting the “Add Email to Blacklist” option. This will immediately update the spam filter and put the sender into your Enemies list. If you do this accidentally, you can remove them by clicking the “Add Email to Whitelist” option instead. While time-consuming, this does help block messages coming from a specific bad sender.

Forward to Spam Filter

Another step is to forward the entire bad message, including the envelope, to the spam filter. This is a little more complicated than a regular forward, but webmail has a built-in feature you can use. At https://webmail.itctel.com, open the email that you want to report as spam. On the right-hand side of the Forward button is a tiny arrow pointing down. Click on the arrow and choose “Forward as attachment.” Then send the new email to the spam@edgewave.com or gosupport@gosecure.net email addresses. This will ensure that the envelope gets sent to the spam filter and not just the message. The envelope is important because it helps us determine where the spam came from.

If you use a product like Microsoft Outlook or another email software, the easiest way to forward as an attachment is to start a brand-new email. Once you have the new email open, drag and drop the spam message into the body of the new email. The program will automatically turn it into the type of forward you want. Address it to spam@edgewave.com or gosupport@gosecure.net and click send.

When the spam filter receives a forwarded email, as described above, a real person will look at it to make sure it wasn’t a non-spam message sent accidentally. If they agree that it is a spam message, new rules will be written to help prevent similar messages from arriving in every customer’s inbox.

You can choose to both mark a message and add it to your Enemies list and still forward it to the spam filter. When you have done those steps, delete the message.

Do Not Interact

Do not interact with spam messages. Please do not download the images or click on any of the links they provide. However, it is safe to open the message in the webmail preview window and report the message.

At ITC, our goal is to trap the highest volume of spam possible. You can help by using the Mark buttons and sending bad emails to the spam filter.