Report Spam via IMAP

You can report spam via our IMAP system using your own third-party email client.

IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) is a standard email protocol that stores email messages on a mail server, and allows email clients to access those messages remotely.

IMAP Access

The quarantine system is powered by an IMAP backend. The backend is accessible when logged in as super-admin, domain (using the domain name as the username), and email (using the email address as the username) users. Customers using the Spam Experts hosted cloud should login to master.antispamcloud.com.

Users on a Spam Experts Local Cloud can use the hostname of the primary server in that cluster (or a CNAME associated to it).

For Local Cloud users, you may use the super-admin account, which can be used to retrieve IMAP access to all quarantined messages.

IMAP access is only available using mandatory TLS.

IMAP folders

The folders in the IMAP account are:

  • Caught: All incoming messages which have been quarantined can be found in this folder. It's not necessary to report these emails as Spam again, as they have already been classified as such. These emails will automatically expire
  • Caught (Outgoing): All outgoing messages which have been quarantined can be found in this folder (optional). It's not necessary to report these emails as Spam again, as they have already been classified as such. These emails will automatically expire
  • Training Requested: This is only relevant if the option as been activated via the Software API to store a copy of unsure classifications in this folder. These messages have been delivered, but can be manually dragged/dropped to "Not Spam" or "Spam" to further fine-tune the systems
  • Release & Train: Drag and drop emails from "Caught" to this folder. This will allow the message to be delivered to the recipient and reported as a classification error to our central systems
  • Release: Drag and drop emails from "Caught" to this folder. This will allow the message to be delivered to the recipient only
  • Not Spam: Drag and drop emails from "Caught" or "Training Requested" to this folder. This will allow messages to be reported as a classification error to our central systems, but will not deliver the message to the recipient
  • Spam: Drag and drop emails to this folder. These messages will be reported as Spam to our central systems and will not deliver the message to the recipient. This is useful to report spam which was not blocked by the filter from the recipients email client

    • Please contact Spam Experts support for assistance.

Requirements

In order to access your messages stored in the Spam Experts Quarantine from Outlook using IMAP, you need to set up your email client with the following Spam Experts credentials:

  • IMAP hostname: master.antispamcloud.com or for Local Cloud customers, this should be your primary server's hostname
  • IMAP username: The domain user account's username or email user account's username (these need to exist in Spam Experts first)
  • IMAP Password: The password for the above username

And either:

  • Implicit TLS connection IMAP Port: 993

    • or

  • Explicit TLS connection IMAP Port: 143 and STARTTLS

Spam Experts can only support TLS 1.2 and above. If you have an older client which does not support this, please update the client.

Instructions using Microsoft Outlook

  1. Open the Outlook app
  2. Navigate to File, select add account
  3. Expand Advanced Options and check Let me set up my account manually

  4. Select IMAP
  5. Fill the IMAP Account Settings as follows:

    • Incoming mail server: master.antispamcloud.com or for Local Cloud customers, this should be your primary server's hostname
    • Port: 993
    • Encryption method: SSL/TLS
    • Outbound mail server: your clients outbound SMTP server address
    • Port: port on the outbound SMTP Server (usually 587, but this might differ based on your Mail server and its configuration)
    • Encryption method: As configured on the outbound SMTP server
  6. Click Next
  7. Enter the password for the super-admin, domain or email user used
  8. Click Connect and once verification is complete, click Done to close the wizard
  9. Right click the account which now shows in your Outlook app and click IMAP Folders

  10. Click Query and a list of IMAP folders will be displayed
  11. Ensure you are subscribed to a selection of the following folders, depending on the requirements:
    • Caught
    • Not Spam
    • Release
    • Release and Train
    • Release and Train/Not Spam
    • Spam

  12. Click Apply and OK to close the window

Outlook 2011 Apple-Mac

The configuration above will also work for Office 2011 Mac version, however to see the full list of subscribed IMAP folders you need to change one setting:

  1. Navigate to 'Preferences'
  2. Click on 'General'
  3. Un-check the box that says 'Group Similar Folders'

You should now be able to see the full list of IMAP folders in the left pane window.