1. What happens to my "scrubbed" email?

Once a message is determined to be "SPAM" it isn't really completely discarded. In reality, it's moved to a backup folder, and an entry is placed in a log file. When viewing the log file, you then have the option of either a) moving the message to your mailbox, or b) deleting the message immediately.

2. What if I never look at my rejected messages?

Messages (and log file entries) are only kept for a limited period of time (typically, a week). Every day, a "grim reaper" program scans your rejected messages and deletes (permanently) the entries that are older than the save period (typically, one week). This means you can check your log file entries every few days to see if there is some message that has been rejected by the filter that is actually "good" (i.e., NOT spam). If you never look at your log file, all messages older than a week old that were rejected by Scrubbit will be permanently deleted.

3. What's a "friends" list?

Messages from certain sources may be considered to be friendly, even if they contain offensive material. For example, your best friend may give you some personal feed-back and tell you that you resemble a horses behind. More realistically, you may want to prevent certain email addresses from being rejected because they are sending to a distribution list (of which you are a member) and they are not including you as a "To:" or "Cc:" address in the list. You have the option of including a specific friend, or a whole group of friends (i.e., a domain) using the "wildcard" approach. In this case, you might include the entry "@syv.com" in your friends list, meaning "accept all messages from email boxes ending with the domain "syv.com" (e.g., dave@syv.com). (Note: this same rule applies to entries in the block list.)

4. What's a "block" list?

Messages from certain sources may be considered to be unfriendly, meaning you don't want to get any emails from those sources. In this case, if a message is receive and is from a source on your "block" list, it will be automatically discarded (but saved temporarily in the log file). You might want to diligently put spammers' email addresses into your block list.

5. How do I specify entries in the "friends" or "block" lists?

Both lists use the same format. This allows 1) specific email addresses; 2) specific domains; or 3) "wildcard" domains. Here are some examples:

A specific email address is simply the full address (e.g., dave@syv.com).
A specific domain is specified as "@domainname.com". For example, specifying the name "@silcom.com" means "all email addresses @silcom.com".
A wildcard domain is specified as "@*.ru", meaning any email address that ends with the pattern ".ru". This would exclude any emails from Russia, if used in the block list.

6. What other safeguards are being taken against SPAM?

SPAM is a major threat to the usability of the Internet. Most Internet services also try to block the source computers which relay the SPAM (virtual Post Offices), but they change very frequently. Because SPAM is currently a very low cost approach in contacting a very large number of people, spammers persist in their efforts. This is exacerbated by the fact that there is no international law that governs the transmission of SPAM, and that much of the SPAM is highly offensive (e.g., pornographic). This is very similar to trying to eliminate gophers on the open prarie - there is no existent law, and the benefits are high to the spammers. Most ISPs do their best to block well-known spamming sites, and there is increasing effort to establish a legal means of increasing the cost of this sort of network abuse. Meanwhile, SPAM filtering is a "best-effort" approach.

7. How do I make my own "bad words" list?

Scrubbit Version 1 uses a global "bad words" list, containing words that are offensive to most recipients. (For example: viagra....). A copy of this list can be provided on email request to admin@syv.com. (An enhancement to the Scrubbit program is planned to enable the use of private "bad words" lists, allowing editing of the list on a per-user basis.)

8. What is classified as a virus?

Viruses are primarily transmitted as email attachments, containing executable files (.exe, .com, .bat, .lnk, .scr, .pif, or .cmd files). Email messages containing attachments with these file names (which can contain executable programs containing viruses) are automatically deleted by Scrubbit. HOWEVER, there are some JavaScript files that may be included in web pages that are attached to email messages. You should make sure that your email program (e.g., Outlook Express) is configured to optimize security (blocking certain JavaScript functions).