Spam Soap Product Description and FAQ
Spam Soap is a product that handles e-mail on a front-end before it arrives to your computer. Simply put, it grabs e-mail with viruses and e-mail with the hueristics that resemble spam. Spam and virus list updates are done on an hourly basis so you are protected with up to the hour security.
What happens to mail labeled as spam?
It is sent to an inbox at your domain called “spambox” which is set up by the Alpine mail administrator. You should check this box regularly for the first few weeks to ensure legitimate e-mail is not getting caught.
What happens to messages that have viruses?
These messages are tagged by the system with its up to the hour virus protection list. They filter the message for the text of the message and send a message to the originating person saying they sent a virus with the virus name and send a message to you with a notice that someone tried to send you a virus and short description. You will not get the virus.
What happens if I get mail caught by Spam Soap that isn’t spam?
Forward that message to nospam@alpineinternet.com with the full internet headers cut and pasted to the top of that message. This should tell the system not to catch e-mail like this in the future.
I still get some spam, how do I get that included in the filters?
Spam is constantly changing to battle spam protection products. The major problem is they want you to see their spam and buy the products they are hawking and they will take whatever means they can find to get it in front of you. In order to put spam into the filters, forward the message to spam@alpineinternet.com with the full internet headers cut and pasted to the top of that message. This will give the filters further detail to stop this from happening in the future.
I have submitted the spam a couple of times, why does it never get caught?
The most likely answer is that it’s not the exact same. Spammers are getting to be very saavy at making single character changes in e-mail once they figure out one that seems to get through filters. It may take a few times before it gets caught.
Also, if someone knows your exact mail server name and sends directly to it, therefore bypassing the Spam Soap service, it will not get caught. Thankfully, this doesn’t happen very often and they usually update their mail server lists every few months.
How do I check the spambox?
The spambox is like any other inbox with e-mail. You can setup a mail client, such as Outlook, Eudora or Pine, to accept e-mail coming in from that inbox. This can get pretty cumbersome because if you are getting a lot of spam, you will be sorting through a lot of e-mail. You can also access it via the Alpine Webmail. Simply open a web browser to the following URL:
http://mail.<domain>
Provide your domain name as the rest of the URL. For example, if your e-mail address is foo@alpineinternet.com your domain would be alpineinternet.com. The username will be your fully qualified domain name. Again, if your e-mail address is foo@alpineinternet.com, your username would also be foo@alpineinternet.com. The password is the password you use for your e-mail client to access that account. You can browse through the e-mail here and delete unwanted e-mail pretty quickly.
How does billing work?
At the beginning of each month, we scan through the number of inboxes you have (this does not include alias, forwards or mailing lists). The system subtracts out “spambox” and “postmaster” as these are required accounts and there is no need to charge for this. There are two different monthly admin prices, one for a single domain and one for multiple domains.
For a single domain, we total up each inbox and charge $2.75 per inbox per month. The domain monthly administration fee is $15.00. An example would be 10 inboxes and a single domain would be:
$2.75 x 10 = $20.75
1 Domain@ $15.00
Total: $35.75
For multiple domains you get a monthly admin fee of $25.00 for the first three domains, each domain after that is a further $10.00 in charges. An example would be, again, the 10 inboxes with two domains:
$2.75 x 10 = $20.75
2 Domain@ $25.00
Total: $45.75
