Types of rules in Xeams for email filtering
Xeams uses several types of rules to assign a score to an email. These rules are defined below.
IP Based Rules
These rules act on the sender's IP address and include the following.RBL - The word "RBL" stands for Real-Time Blackhole List. It refers to several services on the Internet that keeps a database of IP addresses belonging to known spammers, virus sources and other exploits. Xeams queries these servers to check if the IP address exists in such a list.
SPF Check - The word "SPF" stands for Sender Policy Framework. It is a mechanism to publish a list of IP address for a given domain. SPF records are used to prevent email forgery on the Internet. Many companies publish their SPF data through their DNS server, which includes a list of IP addresses where an email can originate. Xeams tries to match the SPF record for in-coming messages and assigns a score if a mismatch is found.
Black/White listing - Administrators can either black list or white list IP addresses in Xeams. A black listed IP address is assigned a positive score, whereas a white list IP address is assigned a negative score.
Content filters
Finger print analysis - Xeams uses a proprietary method of creating a finger print of every email. This finger print is then compared with future messages to determine if it is part of a bulk-mail campaign.Image analysis - Embedded images in emails are analyzed for patterns.
Body and Header - Xeams utilizes a two-pass approach to analyze the body of every message. It then compares it with a known list of keywords containing a score. Rules can be specified for the following sections:
- Subject
- Body
- Attachments
- Header
Custom filter
Custom filters are the most powerful and effective filters used in Xeams to detect junk messages. Often spammers use several tricks to avoid being filtered. These custom filters are specially designed to detect such tricks. We believe that these custom filters are so effective that leaving just these filters on you can eliminate 90% of all junk messages.Virus detection
There are two types of virus detection in Xeams- Finger print analysis
- Integration with CLAMAV - an open source virus protection
Adaptive filters
Adaptive filters are self-learning filters that
gets smarter by analyzing the patterns of previously sent and received emails. These filters include:- Bayesian analysis
- Manually marking messages junk or good
- Sender history tracking
