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• What is Sophos PureMessage?

  Sophos PureMessage is software that blocks or quarantines potential spam and viruses on incoming e-mails.
  
• How does PureMessagework?

  Sophos PureMessage looks at every e-mail's subject line and sender to determine potential spam. From this information Sophos calculates the odds of the message being spam. If the e-mail has at least a 50% chance of being spam, then the message is quarantined. A user can customize the rules which Sophos will adhere to. The individual rules, defined by the user, will override any server rules. Therefore, if a quarantined message is actually a desired e-mail the user can white list the sender. Once a sender is white listed any e-mail from that sender will be passed on to the users inbox and will not be quarantined.

  Twice a day, Sophos will send a 'Digest' message to the user. This digest is a list of your quarantined messages. OIS encourages people to review their quarantined messages to ensure that wanted e-mail is not being accidentally quarantined.

  If you have your e-mail forwarded to an off-campus server (ie. Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo etc...) you will receive the digest e-mails and you must specify, if any, senders should be allowed.
  

• Guides

  • How to "White List" or Block a specific sender

  Valid email addresses are of the form user@domain. The user may contain alphanumeric characters, the underscore (_), the dot (.) and the hyphen(-). The domain may contain alphanumeric characters, the hyphen and the dot. Wildcards may also be used. Wildcards are used to match users at a particular domain. The wildcard character is the asterisk (*), which will match any set of alphanumeric characters and underscores. To match bob@example.net one would use *@example.net.To" *@example.net.  To match bob.smith@example.net one would use *.*@nowhere.com" *.*@example.net. To match an entire domain, one would use @example.net or **@example.net.

  • How to stop digest emails about quarantined messages.

  Under options, there is a checkbox for PureMessage to send you emails about the messages it has quarantined. To disable this simply uncheck the box (Warning: you will no longer get emails notifying you about what has been blocked; it is possible that PureMessage will block wanted emails).