Spam Smacker FAQs:

What do I do if the blacklist servers I am using are blacklisting valid domains?

This recently happened to one of the SPEWS servers and companies worldwide had to remote that server from their blacklist server lists. For Spam Smacker customers, this is a 2 second change with the admin console or using the registry editor on the Spam Smacker server. Use these tools to remove the server from the default list of blacklist servers.

Spam is getting through and I get these WSH errors in the event logs. What is going on?

The 1.0 engine has a maximum field range for messages sent to large distributions. This problem was corrected in the 1.1 release. Click the Updates page to get the latest released versions of the code.

Does it check the sender domain to see if it’s valid?

That option is enabled by default, yes. There are many other networking checks as well. Valid, spoofed, blacklist, etc.

Can it search html for email that is one huge image?

Not in this release. We can search for keywords, phases, heuristics, but currently not file sizes. What we can do is search for messages with "SRC=HTTP://" or similar phrases to filter all embedded HTML messages that call a website.

Allows you to configure black/white lists?

Yes, including spam-override; recipients that should never have their emails scanned.

Updates SPAM definitions regularly?

Yes, online updates of both the engine and filter database.

Automatically deletes mail to a specific recipient?

Yes, that is possible and configurable

How does it deal with HTML splitters?

Removes splits (decodes %20%65 and such) and then processes the message

Removes an attachment, but will allow mail text to be approved?

No, version 1.0 filters the entire message

Is Spam Smacker compatible with Exchange Server 2003?

Definitely! Presently, Spam Smacker 1.0 supports Windows 2003 Server with a few manual post-installation steps:

1) Create a new Domain User called SpamSmacker (or whatever you like).

2) Go to Administrative tools->Component Services->Component Services->Computers->My Computer->DCOM Config->SSFilt.clsFiles->Right Click Properties->Identity->Select This User and put the username as mydomain\SpamSmacker and password as SpamSmacker's password. Confirm password. Hit Apply and OK.

3) Using File Explorer, navigate to "C:\Program Files\SpamSmacker" and give Full Control permissions to the SpamSmacker account.

4) Using regedt32, navigate to the "HKLM\Software\ProExchange" key and give Full Control permission to the SpamSmacker account.

We fully support Exchange 2003 and Windows 2003 Server in version 1.0 and will automate these steps in the coming 1.1 version. 

Does this install on all the exchange servers or just the SMTP server?

It goes on an Exchange 2000 server and should go on the E2K server that handles inbound SMTP mail. It works great on Exchange 2000 front-end servers.

How does this work with Exchange clusters?

Version 1.0 is not supported on a clustered server. (Won't work because of known limitations with event sinks on E2K clusters. Exchange 2003 has revamped this so we expect it will work great on an E2K cluster). We will include cluster support in the next release scheduled for September 2003.

Can you  create different filters and rules per mailbox?

Currently, 1.0 supports group-override and individual-override. Specific individual filters will likely be incorporated into the next release.

How does Spam Smacker perform under load?

In lab tests, version 1.0 can process roughly 50,000 messages a day on a single Spam Smacker server. This performance can be increased dramatically by turning off the blacklist and reverse-DNS lookup features. A caching engine will be added to the next release to increase the performance even more.

My Administrative pages no longer show anything under the body filters.

Open your database file to see is someone recently added an <!-- filter. This filter is highly effective in stopping many spam messages, but unfortunately 1.0 of the admin pages gets confused by this entry. An update is pending.