ChoiceMail Enterprise Reviewer’s Guide

August 2003

Table of Contents

Press and Business Contacts at DigiPortal ................................................. 3 Welcome To ChoiceMail Enterprise from DigiPortal Software, Inc. .. 3

Methods, Advantages & Limitations.......................................................... 4 How Permission Based systems work ...................................................... 5 Support for the Visually-Impaired Community .................................... 5 Spoofing responses? Sorry, it can’t be done! ....................................... 6 More on Mailing Lists ...................................................................................... 6 How People use ChoiceMail Enterprise differently .............................. 7 For Those Who Don’t Like the Pop-up Screen ...................................... 7

ChoiceMail Enterprise Overview ..................................................................... 8 How ChoiceMail Enterprise Works with the Email Application........ 9 How ChoiceMail Enterprise Prevents Spam from Reaching Your Inbox ..................................................................................................................... 9 The Sender Registration Process ............................................................. 10 How ChoiceMail Enterprise Works- the user perspective ............... 10

ChoiceMail Enterprise Server System Requirements ........................... 11 ChoiceMail Enterprise Key Features............................................................ 11 Getting Started – the System Administrator .......................................... 12

1 – Server Software Installation .............................................................. 12 2 – Activating individual email accounts............................................... 13

Getting Started – the email users ............................................................... 14 1 – Logging into ChoiceMail Enterprise the first time...................... 14 2 - Importing Existing Email Addresses ................................................ 15 3 - The ChoiceMail Enterprise Main Window ....................................... 16 4 - Accepting and Rejecting Senders ..................................................... 18 5 - Permission Rules ..................................................................................... 20 5 – Approving Domains ............................................................................... 21 6 - Specifying email Rules .......................................................................... 22 7 – When You Purchase Something Online.......................................... 22 8 - Online Billing ............................................................................................. 22

Additional Technical Assistance .................................................................... 22

Press and Business Contacts at DigiPortal Press

Renee L. Blodgett President Blodgett Communications Tel: 617-484-0063 Fax: 760-875-7426 Email: renee@blodgettcomm.com

Industry

Joe Radomsky Vice President of Business Development Tel: 407-805-9582 Fax: 877-881-9127 Email: jradomsky@digiportal.com

Technical

Nebojsa Djogo Vice President, Software Development Tel: 613-741-3574 Fax: 613-741-3574 Email: djogon@digiportal.com

DigiPortal Software, Inc.

5224 West State Road 46, PMB 325 Sanford, FL 32771 Tel: 407-312-8989 www.digiportal.com

Welcome To ChoiceMail Enterprise from DigiPortal Software, Inc. Thank you for your interest in DigiPortal’s ChoiceMail Enterprise software, a leading anti-spam solution for corporations.

DigiPortal Software, Inc. develops information-management tools designed to provide today’s end users with powerful tools for combating information overload and inappropriate Internet content. The company’s flagship solution, ChoiceMail One, is an innovative spam-blocking product that has received significant critical acclaim from the media for its ability to reduce incoming junk email to zero.

ChoiceMail Enterprise stands out as a leader among email software products that filter spam. Many email filters rely on users to continually establish and maintain rules; the ChoiceMail Enterprise anti-spam system is Permission-Based, with the flexibility to use several optional features for unknown email and rules for special situations. The ChoiceMail Enterprise server is positioned between the email server and the and the Internet serving as a border filter device; spam, web bugs and viruses (associated with the unwanted mail) are stopped before getting into the email inbox offering further security and protection.

Unlike most other anti-spam solutions on the market today, ChoiceMail Enterprise gives administrators and users the choice of how to set up their system. This flexible system gives the business and user control of their email.

Unwanted email has gotten out of control; it wastes time and costs real money. An IT manager at one business with 45 email addresses estimates that he spends 20 to 25% of his time dealing with the 30,000 spam his company receives each month. He explained that if the problem continued to grow at the same rate, half of his business day would be spent trying to resolve the issue.

Nucleus Research, estimates that the economic cost is $874 a year for every office worker with an e-mail account. Considering that there are approximately 100 million people in the U.S., the tab comes to about $87 billion.

Recently, there have been a number of controversial discussions over the value of anti-spam software systems and whether they indeed help or increase the problem of unwanted email. It has even been reported that a handful of anti-spam companies have in fact sent spam out to mailing lists (DigiPortal is not one of those companies).

There has also been a significant amount of confusion in the press, weblogs and chat rooms over the pros and cons of the different methods used by anti-spam software solutions. There are three methods used by anti-spam software in the market today: Rules-Based filter systems, Permission-Based solutions and companies that offer a service, which require the user to set up new email account.

Methods, Advantages & Limitations

Method Advantages Limitations

Rule-based filters Effectively screens known spammers and spamming techniques

Require regular updates to deal with new spamming tricks

May prevent desired email from getting through or may allow spam email messages through

Permission Based

Provides the user with the most control over their email inbox and allows them to determine their personal definition of spam

Some implementations do not deal well with mailing lists and newsletters, preventing wanted messages from getting through

Email services

Keeps spam away from the user’s inbox

Centralizes control of defining spam

Requires a new email address to which users must forward all messages

Given the growth of spam in recent years, and the increasing issues spam has created for consumers and enterprises, there has been an explosion of anti-spam solutions on the market attempting to compete for market share. The anti-spam software market has become extremely crowded with numerous vendors touting that their solution is the “most accurate” spam killer on the market.

Most of the offerings in this market offer a rules-based solution to controlling spam. The weaknesses and ineffectiveness of filtering systems of all types are well documented. Like passenger screening devices in airport security, filters find banned articles sometimes and provide false positives at other times. Spam continues to be an unresolved problem since many of these rules-based solutions simply are not good enough to get around the endless stream of new tricks spammers use to get their junk through the filters.

Permission-Based systems are an incredibly reliable way of eliminating spam as defined by each user. Much of the criticism over Permission-Based systems is inaccurate or at best applies to a handful of badly implemented systems on the market. While some of the noted issues are valid, they should be viewed as a consequence of the fact that this is a very new approach rather than an inherently bad one.

Permission-Based systems are known and have received critical acclaim for performing extremely well. They can indeed block 100% of unwanted spam. Permission-Based systems give the user CONTROL over their inbox by blocking material that an end-user considers spam even though the originator may not have viewed it as spam

How Permission Based systems work The basic concept is simple. A Permission-Based system typically contains a whitelist of people from whom messages are always allowed and a blacklist of people from who messages are never allowed.

When an incoming message arrives, the system checks to see whether the address of the incoming message is on the whitelist (in which case the message is approved and automatically available from the users inbox) or on the blacklist (in which case the message is silently deleted – note: the user decides in advance who is on the blacklist, so a message is only automatically deleted when the USER decides it should be deleted).

If the sender is on neither of these lists, the ChoiceMail Enterprise user can select the option of having the system send a new message, a query, back to the sender of the original message giving them the ability to prioritize delivery of their message. In the case of ChoiceMail Enterprise, the user controls the content of the message and whether the query is sent at all. For most spam messages, the email address associated with the original message is bogus and the query is lost (or bounced back because the sender was “unknown”).

If this was the entire process and all that a Permission-Based system was able to do, then the process would be a problem. For example, mailing list moderators are concerned that upon receiving a message from a mailing list, a Permission-Based system will reply with a query, thereby spamming the entire membership list.

Not all Permission-Based systems are alike. DigiPortal’s ChoiceMail Enterprise recognizes that an incoming message is from a mailing list server and never responds with a query. In the worst case, the message will simply remain in unknown sender list for future review. Consider that you should not be getting mail from a mailing list server unless you have already subscribed to it, in which case you can pre-approve messages from that mailing list in advance.

Again, the user takes control of his inbox rather than the spammer. If the user approves the mailing list or promotional email mailing in advance, the user decides what they want to receive and what they don’t and as a result, will not miss any “wanted” messages.

The ChoiceMail family was architected with the assumption in mind that no single method of preventing spam is completely effective; as a result, ChoiceMail Enterprise uses Permission rules can be used to automatically accept senders coming from known places or whose messages contain predefined codes. Other permission rules can be used to automatically delete messages with objectionable content. ChoiceMail One also has mechanisms for detecting bogus HTML messages and deleting them on the spot.

Support for the Visually-Impaired Community Some Permission-Based systems are not usable by the visually impaired or blind users because they are unable to see the graphic that is used to ensure that a real person is responding. This is simply a function of how a particular Permission-Based system is implemented. Graphics pose problems for blind computer users who may rely on screen reading technology, which is not able to decipher what the graphic says. ChoiceMail One supports the ability to listen to the graphic so that someone who cannot see the numeric sequence can still respond correctly to a query. When a ChoiceMail One user receives an email from an unknown sender and responds by sending a query back to the sender, the sender then has the option to prioritize the delivery of the message to the ChoiceMail One user by typing in their name, a short description of why they want to communicate and to copy a graphic code to ensure the sender is a real person rather than a computer. DigiPortal has extended this very simple and quick process to the visually-disabled community, by adding a feature that allows blind users to access this code by downloading an audio wav file that reads the code aloud to them. They can then type this information into the box, allowing them to verify the code independently.

Spoofing responses? Sorry, it can’t be done! Another techno-myth is that spammers can create fake response messages that pass through Permission-Based systems. While some solutions on the market may not be able to combat this, DigiPortal’s ChoiceMail Enterprise “knows” to whom it has sent out queries and it will simply throw away responses for which it has not recorded a query. Secondly, ChoiceMail One also throws away responses that don’t come from predefined servers. Finally, the mechanisms used to create responses are highly encrypted so it is not possible for a spammer to respond to a query pretending to be someone else.

More on Mailing Lists Despite the attack of Permission-Based systems on poorly handling mailing lists, the ChoiceMail Enterprise anti-spam solution is kind to mailing list servers. The ChoiceMail Enterprise system recognizes incoming mail from mailing lists and does not send a query. The concerns of the listserv community are unwarranted.

ChoiceMail Enterprise knows to whom it sent queries and it will simply throw away a response that does not come back from anyone else. Secondly, the responses can only be generated by DigiPortal servers and ChoiceMail Enterprise will simply ignore responses that come from anywhere else. Finally, the underlying information needed to create the responses is highly encrypted.

Spammers cannot fake the first Received header in an email message. This header normally contains the name of the mailing list server and the name of your SMTP server. It then becomes a simple solution to create a permission rule that checks this header to verify the authenticity of a message purporting to be from a mailing list to which you subscribe. Therefore, if a Permission-Based system is designed correctly, there is no problem handling mailing lists.

It is not possible for spammers to generate fake responses with the ChoiceMail Enterprise system. ChoiceMail Enterprise has several redundant layers of protection specifically to protect users from this theoretical threat.

It is important to understand that when someone sends an email to a ChoiceMail Enterprise user, even though ChoiceMail Enterprise is preventing that message from reaching your email application, you are still able to use the ChoiceMail Enterprise user interface (and for the upcoming version (already running our field trials) you can use a web browser or wireless device) to see all the mail that is being held by ChoiceMail Enterprise pending approval.

At that point you can preview messages from senders who have not responded to (or seen) the query message. In particular, when you preview them, you do it using our "Safe Message Previewer" which NEVER triggers a web bug or activates a virus. That way, you can check an email that you THINK is from someone you know and not accidentally screw up your computer (virus) or let a spammer know that you looked at a spam message (web bug).

ChoiceMail Enterprise is also able to apply permission rules to dump stuff that it can guarantee is spam (vs. "thinking" it's "probably" spam) so as to reduce the actual number of queries that go out. We know from significant feedback that our users have approached ChoiceMail Enterprise in different ways.

How People use ChoiceMail Enterprise differently 1) Some users NEVER look at the ChoiceMail Enterprise user interface unless they KNOW that an email is coming (such as from an online vendor so that they can immediately approve it) and operate on the assumption that if an unknown sender doesn’t bother to go through the query process, then their message is not worth seeing.

2) Others leave the query process enabled but still review their unknown sender list periodically so that they can pre-approve new people quickly if they can determine that it's legitimate (which they can do by previewing etc). Note that one can sort the unknown sender list by date so you only need to look at the top few items each time.

3) Still others disable the query process and just review the unknown sender list quite often.

The mode that you use really depends on your situation. Many users have a pretty well-defined set of people with whom they correspond and rarely get mail from unknown people (other than spammers). They will typically use mode one. Some business people want to make sure that they don't miss something important will use mode two. Finally some users want to monitor all of their email or are not comfortable sending queries to unknown senders; they use ChoiceMail Enterprise's blocking feature to block new messages (remember that known people always come through) and they leave the CME interface visible all the time so they can monitor their messages.

For Those Who Don’t Like the Pop-up Screen Remember that sending the query message is an option that the user can turn on or off. For the majority of people who truly wish to eliminate the growing number of daily junk email messages, using the query message is their preferred choice. For those who have more time to manage their email boxes and would prefer to select certain filters and rules, they can choose that option.

If everyone looked at the long term gain of taking a few seconds to fill in an “occasional” query message window to cut out the hundreds of unwanted messages crippling in-boxes, we could collectively put an end to spammers who have begun to control our desktops rather than the other way around. Bear in mind that very few people should in fact receive a query considering that everyone listed in your address book or database is automatically pre-approved. You can individually choose to disapprove a handful of people if you wish. If the person has not been added to the pre-approved list yet, they are asked to fill in the form ONCE. The ten second process is a minor interim step to take if it helps eliminate spam for all of us.

The query is a considerable benefit in the long run. Consider this: email has become a critical part of our lives yet an incredible amount of time is wasted dealing with unnecessary information, to say nothing of stuff that should be handled through different mechanisms such as newsgroups for discussions rather than mailing lists so that the recipient can look at the information at a time of his/her own choosing rather than often being interrupted with (frankly) unimportant garbage.

The query mechanism adds a useful "prioritization" to the mix. For example, “if I don't know you and you send me a message but don't want to take the few seconds to respond to the query, you have implicitly decided (as you indicate) that your message is not that important.”

ChoiceMail Enterprise gives the user the control of his/her desktop not the spammer. And we think that’s progress!

ChoiceMail Enterprise Overview ChoiceMail One stands out as a leader among email software products that filter spam. Many email filters rely on users to continually establish and maintain rules; the ChoiceMail One anti-spam filtering system is permission based optional features deal effectively with unknown email and special situations.

Many features set ChoiceMail Enterprise apart from other products. Highlights include:

• Easy integration with the existing corporate email environment • ChoiceMail Enterprise is not a plug-in and does not need to be installed on the users’

computers.

• ChoiceMail Enterprise is approval based, which gives you the most complete and effective control over your email inbox. Unknown senders must register before you see their email.

• Easy setup lets you create a white list of approved senders by importing your contact list or address book from your email or contact-management software application.

• Your email is quarantined outside the corporate email server and the users’ inbox, thereby preventing the accidental activation of viruses and web bugs.

• There’s no need to change your email address.

• Unlike filter systems, which block email and sometimes delete it, ChoiceMail Enterprise holds unknown mail until the sender either registers or the recipient accepts the message.

• ChoiceMail’s Enterprise behaves as a border filter, residing between the enterprise email environment and the internet, protecting your company by filtering and scanning your email and removing spam messages they hit your network. In addition, web bugs and viruses embedded in spam messages never get into your company.

• Smart responder — ChoiceMail Enterprise’s auto responder ONLY responds to people on your white list. So you can provide contact information (a phone number, say) to people who need to reach you while you’re away without exposing that private information to everyone who sends you a message

• Vanity pages: corporate users often take advantage of our vanity page product where, instead of displaying the default DigiPortal query page, a page is displayed that has the look and feel of the corporate website, complete with images and text to suit the company image. This is an optional service but important for entities that wish to present their own query suitable to their needs.

How ChoiceMail Enterprise Works with the Email Application ChoiceMail Enterprise is positioned between the enterprise mail server and the Internet. Implementation of ChoiceMail Enterprise is simple, requiring no change to the existing email server or user clients.

All inbound mail arrives in the ChoiceMail Enterprise server and is evaluated according to corporate and individual whitelists and permission rules. Valid email is pushed to the enterprise email server, known spam is sent to the junk folder and unknown email is sent to the unknown senders folder.

Email users access their messages the same way that they did prior to ChoiceMail being installed.

Remote sending Web browser or Email client mail server CM Client

How ChoiceMail Enterprise Prevents Spam from Reaching Your Inbox ChoiceMail Enterprise is a permission-based system with user controlled options to deal effectively with unknown email and special situations.

ChoiceMail Enterprise has two “sets” of rules that it uses to evaluate each incoming email message- one for the enterprise and each individual user. Each set of rules consists of a whitelist of senders that will always be approved, a blacklist that is never allowed through and a list of permission rules to handle exceptions. New approved senders can be added in the following ways:

• Manually – The system administrator can add an email address to a corporate whitelist; an individual can add an email address to their individual whitelist. For example, if you know you will be receiving an email from john@smith.com, you can manually pre-approve that sender so that he will not be asked to register when he sends you a message.

• Importing contacts – Senders can be approved by importing a contact list or address book into ChoiceMail Enterprise.

• Permission rules – Create individual or enterprise wide filters to determine the disposition of a new email message based on its content. This is not often needed because of ChoiceMail’s automatic approval system but is sometimes useful for automatically accepting email messages coming from a list server where the sender might be different every time.

Junk mail

Valid mail

ChoiceMail Enterprise

Email client

Email client

internet

enterprise network

Individual Whitelist/Blacklist/Permission Rules Existing email server

Enterprise Whitelist/Blacklist/Permission Rules

Unknown mail

The Sender Registration Process When ChoiceMail Enterprise receives an email from someone not in one of the whitelists or blacklists, ChoiceMail automatically requires that sender to register. (This feature can be turned off on an individual email user basis if they are not comfortable sending query messages to unknown senders.) When ChoiceMail Enterprise receives such a message, it places that sender on a “New Senders” list and sends an automatic reply to the sender, requesting that he or she register. ChoiceMail Enterprise temporarily stores the email, pending receipt of the registration reply.

Because most junk email is sent using fake email addresses, the steps above are sufficient to eliminate all automated junk mail messages. The registration requests will simply fail to go anywhere, and the sender is eventually deleted from the ChoiceMail Enterprise Unknown Senders list.

If the return email address is valid and the query is received by the original sender, the sender registers by going to a webpage and filling in a form explaining who they are and why they wish to contact the user. The submitted form is then sent to ChoiceMail Enterprise for processing. At this point, the new sender is moved from the “Unknown Senders” list to the list of senders waiting for approval. If the sender is approved, the email is sent to the user’s inbox and the address is added to the appropriate whitelist. If a user chooses not to approve the sender, the email is eventually moved to the junk box and will be deleted in a few days. A user can also choose to permanently reject email from a sender.

How ChoiceMail Enterprise Works- the user perspective ChoiceMail Enterprise provides the most effective protection against spam, protecting your email inbox according to your own definition of spam.

• If the sender’s email address is included in your whitelist (i.e., list of preapproved senders) or a permission rule, ChoiceMail Enterprise passes the email directly through to your email application’s inbox.

• If the sender’s email address is included in your blacklist (i.e., list of rejected senders), ChoiceMail Enterprise sends it to the Junk Box where it is eventually deleted.

• If the sender’s email address is not included on any ChoiceMail Enterprise lists or rules, ChoiceMail sends a query asking that the sender register, and adds the email to the Unknown Senders list. The email message is not sent to your email application. The sender registers by going to a webpage and filling in a form explaining who they are and why they wish to contact you, by completing this information, the sender insures that their message will get to the intended recipient. The submitted form is then received by ChoiceMail Enterprise for processing.

• If the sender does not register within a specified number of days (specified in the Account settings), the email is moved to the Junk Box. After another interval, the email is automatically deleted.

• If the sender does register, ChoiceMail Enterprise displays the sender information in the Senders Waiting for Approval list. You can approve, reject, reject with a reason, or delete the sender using the buttons.

• You can preapprove or reject individual senders and/or domains.

• You can set permission rules for accepting and rejecting senders.

ChoiceMail Enterprise Server System Requirements Operating System Windows NT 4.0, 2000, XP or 2003 Server

Memory 256 RAM minimum

Processor Processor Pentium 133MHz or higher

Other CD ROM

ChoiceMail Enterprise Key Features

Feature Benefit

Integrated with the enterprise server

No need to forward email outside of the enterprise mail environment.

Private & secure Emails are downloaded directly to the enterprise mail environment from the Internet and are not intercepted or stored by a 3rd party, as they would be with service-based solutions.

Works with your email application

ChoiceMail Enterprise does not replace the enterprise email application, nor does it require additional software for each workstation.

Optional sender registration Anyone sending a user an email message that is not on a whitelist must submit a registration request for approval (this is optional by individual user).

Preapproval management There are both enterprise and individual permission rules to accept or reject senders.

Safe message preview Users can preview messages before deciding whether to allow them into their email inbox. No information is sent back to a spammer when you do this.

Automatic Whitelisting If you send an email to someone for the first time, this email address can be automatically preapproved.

Import existing contacts ChoiceMail Enterprise can import email addresses from many email applications, so that existing contacts are preapproved.

Away responder ChoiceMail Enterprise can reply automatically to people on a user’s whitelist to let them know their message was received.

Junk box ChoiceMail Enterprise saves all deleted mail in a junk box for future review, if required.

Not a service Emails are company property and remain as such. Email continues to reside on the enterprise owned machine rather than on somebody else’s server.

Registrations processed by ChoiceMail Enterprise

Registrations from legitimate senders are handled from inside the ChoiceMail Enterprise system. They do not appear in the email application, so users are not interrupted unnecessarily.

Registration forms in multiple languages

ChoiceMail Enterprise users in non-English speaking countries can configure ChoiceMail so that the sender sees the registration form in a different language.

Getting Started – the System Administrator ChoiceMail Enterprise requires several short steps to get it working properly for your email users.

1 – Server Software Installation 1. Insert the ChoiceMail Enterprise disc into the CD-ROM drive of the ChoiceMail Enterprise

server.

2. Follow the Installer prompts as you would for any Windows program installation. At the ChoiceMail Enterprise License Agreement screen, click the Accept button and then click OK.

3. Continue through the setup screens. The Information screen may already display your name and company. If it does not, fill in these fields appropriately. Click the Next button.

4. The Destination Folder is the location on your hard drive where the ChoiceMail Enterprise application will be installed. You can change the Destination Folder or accept the defaults. Click the Next button.

5. In the Select Components screen, choose Run automatically at startup if you want ChoiceMail Enterprise to run automatically whenever you run Windows. Choose Add desktop icon if you want an icon on your desktop so you can start ChoiceMail Enterprise manually. Click the Next button.

6. In the Select Program Manager Group screen, you can accept the default folder name in your Start Programs list where a ChoiceMail Enterprise icon will be added. Click the Next button.

7. You should now be at the Start Installation screen. Click the Next button and the ChoiceMail Enterprise installation will begin.

8. Once installation completes, you can select the checkbox to view the README file and then click the Finish button. Be sure to read these notes for any last minute updates. You’re now ready to start using ChoiceMail Enterprise.

9. On the final screen of the installer, you can choose to launch the program immediately if you wish.

10. At this point in the installation, it is necessary to verify network connections.

2 – Activating individual email accounts The System Administrator has a password controlled management interface to activate email accounts and manage enterprise rules and lists. The administrator simply adds the email accounts for ChoiceMail Enterprise to monitor.

Getting Started – the email users Each email user has a few short steps to complete to enable ChoiceMail Enterprise to stop spam form entering their email inbox.

1 – Logging into ChoiceMail Enterprise the first time 1. Open your web browser and access the url provided by the system administrator.

2. Enter your user name and password where indicated and click Login.

3. You will see the ChoiceMail Enterprise Main screen with the blue main menu along the left side.

The ChoiceMail Enterprise Main Menu

Senders Click this button to view the unknown senders that are waiting for approval.

Preapprove a new sender Manually add a new email address to your whitelist.

Reject a new sender Manually add a new email address to your blacklist.

Accepted domains

Indicates the number of messages in the junk box that are scheduled for deletion. Click this button to open the Junk Box window and see the contents. You can preview a message, accept or delete a message, and purge all the messages in the Junk Box. (You don’t need to purge them – messages are deleted automatically after a few days.)

Rejected domains View, add or delete domains from which you will never accept email.

Permission rules View, add or delete rules for special circumstances.

Junk box View the junk box. These messages are scheduled for deletion. You can preview a message, accept or delete a message, and purge all the messages in the Junk Box. (You don’t need to purge them – messages are deleted automatically after a few days.)

Account settings Manage the features of ChoiceMail Enterprise

Import Address book

This allows you to import your address book from your email application or contact manager using CSV format.

Email Addresses Shows email addresses that are used by the email user.

Mailing lists View, add or delete mailing list from which you will accept email.

Messages Customization View and customize the query message that is sent to unknown senders.

Away message

View and customize the away message that is sent to members of your whitelist.

Display options Set the number of messages that are displayed per page

2 - Importing Existing Email Addresses You can import your existing email addresses into your ChoiceMail Enterprise whitelist so that these senders are pre-approved and all incoming emails from these addresses are automatically accepted.

Follow the instructions of your email or contact management application to export your address book in CSV format.

1. Choose Import address book from the Main menu.

2. Select Browse and find the CSV file with your address book. Click Import.

3. All the selected email addresses are now pre-approved and are part of your whitelist

3 - The ChoiceMail Enterprise Main Window The ChoiceMail Enterprise main window provides several views, so you can quickly see what’s happening with your incoming email messages. Click on one of the menu items to access one of the functions listed.

ChoiceMail Enterprise Icons

Refresh - Reloads the current page.

0 Messages Indicator – Indicates the number of available email messages in your inbox for approval. You can preview your new messages, and send a reply to a sender.

Senders Waiting for Your Approval – ChoiceMail Enterprise lists all the email senders who have responded to the registration message. You must approve or reject each message.

All Senders – ChoiceMail lists all senders.

Sender List Filter – Show/ hide the sender list filter.

Message Info– Show/ hide message information.

New Messages Filter – Restrict new senders view to messages added today.

When you accept or approve a sender, the sender is added to your whitelist. Accepting an unknown sender means that ChoiceMail Enterprise will permit all future emails coming from that sender to pass through to your email application.

If you reject a sender, ChoiceMail Enterprise places that sender on your blacklist, and will not permit any email messages from that sender to pass through.

If you delete a sender, it is as if that sender never existed in your system. If that sender subsequently sends you another message, they will get an automatic response asking them to register. It is rarely necessary to explicitly delete a sender – a sender who does not register will be deleted automatically, along with all their emails.

If you do not approve a sender, his/her email messages are held up. However, you can manually allow individual email messages from a particular sender to be passed through to your email application while waiting for the sender to register. You can also read a message in the Unknown Senders view.

4 - Accepting and Rejecting Senders

You can manually accept or reject a sender using ChoiceMail Enterprise’s toolbar. You can also use the Senders menu for a full list of options.

Unknown Senders – ChoiceMail Enterprise lists all emails received from unknown senders (i.e., email address that are not included in your whitelist). ChoiceMail Enterprise has sent each email address a registration request and is waiting for a response. Normally you should just leave these message in the list – when the registration expiration time has expired, the message is moved to the junk box and will eventually be deleted.

Pending Approval – Shows senders that are waiting for approval.

Rejected Sender – Shows the email addresses of the entries in the blacklist.

Approved Senders – Shows the email addresses of the entries in the whitelist.

All Senders – Switches to the All Sender view.

Accept – Accept this message and add the sender to the whitelist.

Delete – Reject this message and add this sender to the blacklist

Sender Details

5 - Permission Rules ChoiceMail Enterprise lets you create rules that can be used to make decisions about new emails automatically. All incoming email messages are processed against email rules to determine their fate. Rules created by the system administrator take presence over any individually created rules. In the important case where an incoming message (including sender information) doesn’t match any email rule, then ChoiceMail Enterprise sends a registration request back to the sender.

Note that in many cases you don’t need to bother creating explicit permissions. If you have imported your existing contacts into ChoiceMail Enterprise so that they are preapproved, and you have also enabled ChoiceMail Enterprise’s ability to preapprove outgoing senders (the default), then you can just leave it to ChoiceMail Enterprise to manage unknown senders without your having to do anything.

On the other hand, you may want to add some explicit permissions to cover some special circumstances. For example, if you have decided that any email coming from the domain ‘junk.com’ is unwanted email; you can add a rule that silently deletes incoming email from any sender from that domain. The only real benefit of doing so is to stop ChoiceMail Enterprise from sending registration requests to such senders (who are probably spammers anyway). ChoiceMail Enterprise will automatically delete bounced registration requests.

You can choose to add a rule so that all incoming email messages containing a signature unique to your organization are automatically accepted, so that even if such senders are not already on your preapproved list, their messages will get through.

Permission Rule Details

5 – Approving Domains The simplest form of permission rule is to accept or reject all email messages from a specific domain. For example, you may want to receive all incoming messages from your favorite store or from a travel service. And you might want to reject all messages from an unsatisfactory company.

Choose Allow/Reject all messages from another domain from the Senders menu. You can also choose Permission Management from the Actions menu and click the Accepted/Rejected domains tab. Type the domain in the field at the bottom of the window – ChoiceMail Enterprise indicates when you’ve typed a valid domain name. Click the Add button to add the domain to your list of accepted or rejected domains.

You can use wildcards when specifying a domain name. Use a question mark ? to represent any single character, and use an asterisk * to represent a variable number of characters (including nEnterprise). Specifying email?.com will block any messages whose domain ends with the name email followed by any single character. A specification of email*.com will block email.com itself as well as domains such as email123.com, emailxyzzy.com and so forth.

If you subscribe to various newsletters from well known services, you should consider adding the domains of those emails to your Accept domains list. Note that you should only use this method if the actual email address of the sender is different each time you receive a newsletter from the same service. If the service always uses the same email address, then it’s sufficient to just approve that particular sender.

6 - Specifying email Rules You can add new rules to automate the disposition of a new incoming email message. Click the New button on the Message rules tab in the Permission Management dialog window. A new dialog opens where you can add your rules.

1. Click a tab and enter matching text for any item: From, Subject, Body, To, Cc:, To or Cc, and other message headers.

2. Type the text in the appropriate tab(s).

3. If you enter text in more than one tab, specify if the email must match all the conditions or any of the conditions.

4. Select the rule action: accept message, delete message, approve sender, reject sender, or delete sender.

5. Enter a name for your rule – ChoiceMail Enterprise displays the conditions for the new rule you’ve defined.

6. Click OK to save your new email rule.

7 – When You Purchase Something Online

When you purchase something from an online store, you’ll usually receive an email notification from the store soon after you make your purchase. Just monitor the Unknown Senders list for a while (sort by date, most recent sender first) and you’ll quickly recognize the legitimate email coming from your online vendor. You can then decide whether to approve that particular sender or their domain in general — the former is better because some vendor’s email messages will come from domains that are frequently used by spammers.

8 - Online Billing The process here is much the same as with newsletters except that you may not know when your next bill will come in. If you already have an online account for your utility bill or your mortgage, check your existing email messages to find out the email address used by the billing company. You can then add that sender manually.

Additional Technical Assistance If you still have questions about DigiPortal’s ChoiceMail Enterprise anti-spam C/R solution, please visit our website for in-depth support at http://digiportal.com/support/choicemail/index.html.

Access the online help system, FAQs, technical notes, troubleshooting, and tutorial for additional assistance with understanding and using ChoiceMail Enterprise.