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IT&S > guides > managing quarantine accounts

Managing Your Barracuda Quarantine Account(s)

Have the Barracuda Anti-Spam Quarantine messages that get delivered to you on a daily basis become a nuisance? Do you receive multiple quarantine messages? Do you classify messages as spam and the very next day you get messages just like it? If this describes your experiences then read on! In this help page we outline how the Barracuda Anti-Spam Firewall works and how you can tweak your personal anti-spam settings to make your life easier.

Why do we need this Barracuda 'thing' bothering us?

Remember the not-so-good 'ol days before we had the Barracuda Anti-Spam Firewall in place? Spam was not only slowing down email performance, it was clogging your Inbox with untold amounts of junk. Since the summer of 2005 when the Barracuda was installed we have averaged about 100,000 messages a day and roughly 10% - 15% of it is legitimate email. We decided to post these statistics to help our community members keep the 'nuisance' factor of the Barracuda quarantine summary messages in perspective. In short, without the Barracuda in place, mail would be close to unusable.

Why so many quarantine summary email messages?

The first question most people have when it comes to the quarantine service provided by the Barracuda Anti-Spam Firewall is, "How come I get multiple quarantine messages every day?" The reason is simple, if the Barracuda receives a message that it thinks is spam but it is not 100% sure, it will put that message into a quarantine account for the email address it was sent to. If a message thought to be spam was sent to bgibson@wheatonma.edu then it will be placed inside the special quarantine folder for the account bgibson@wheatonma.edu. The same holds true for a 'spammy' message addressed to bgibson@wheatoncollege.edu, the message will be placed inside the special quarantine folder for the account bgibson@wheatoncollege.edu. You and I both know that the email addresses bgibson@wheatonma.edu and bgibson@wheatoncollege.edu are the same person but the Barracuda does not. With all my email aliases (bgibson, gibson_brian) and the two domain names we support (@wheatonma.edu and @wheatoncollege.edu) I could end up with 4 separate quarantines! What a management nightmare.

How do I know what email address the quarantine is for?

Now that you know why you sometimes get multiple quarantine messages it is important to know what 'account' each notification message matches up with. When you receive a spam quarantine message (with the "Subject:" of "Spam Quarantine Summary") open it up and take a look in the top left hand corner of the message. It will list the quarantine email address next to the heading "Account:". If you receive subsequent quarantine summary messages throughout the day take note of the "Account:" heading and that it is different than any previously sent one.

What to do when I receive a quarantine summary message

The very first thing I suggest people do when they receive a quarantine summary message (after they take note of the "Account:" heading) is just go through the list of email messages and if they are all spam.... do NOTHING! Just delete the quarantine notice. If there IS a message in there that you want, click on the "click here" link located near the bottom of the email message. When you click on the "click here" link it will open up a web browser window and automatically log you into the Quarantine account area for that account. I would strongly recommend that you avoid clicking on the "Deliver", "Whitelist", or "Delete" links within the quarantine message you received. The messages it lists within the body of the quarantine summary email message is a point in time snap shot and the actual list of messages that are in your quarantine may be different. In short, when in doubt, always select the "click here" link within the quarantine summary message. For the messages you want to allow through, your best bet would be to place a check mark next to the email and click the "whitelist/not spam" button.

How come I get a "Session Timed Out" message when I click on the "click here" link in the quarantine summary message?

As I mentioned earlier, the "click here" link within the quarantine summary message will automatically log you into your quarantine account by sending over your account name (ex: bgibson@wheatonma.edu) and your password. Please Note: The password is totally different from your Wheaton email password or any other Wheaton password that you use AND this password gets regenerated every few days so don't ever bother trying to keep track or remember your Barracuda account password, it will be an exercise in futility. You will get a "Session Timed Out" error message if you clicked on the "click here" link within a quarantine message that was sent to you more than a day or so ago. This is because your account password on the Barracuda was regenerated and the "click here" link is trying to send the old password. Your best bet at this point is to go to the login page for the Barracuda https://mx.wheatonma.edu and type in your full account name in the "Username:" field (ex: bgibson@wheatonma.edu) and leave the "Password:" field blank. Press the "Create New Password" button near the bottom of that page and the Barracuda will email you a link to auto log you into your quarantine account. The tips to remember in this section are

  • Delete old Barracuda Quarantine Summary messages, the message listing they show in the body of the message will be out of sync with what is actually in the quarantine and the "click here" link will most likely be broken
  • If you need to get into the Barracuda as your account name (email address), go to the login page and have it send you a new link to log in.

I already classified a message just like this as spam, how come I keep getting this type of message in my spam quarantine?

Every quarantine account (examples: bgibson@wheatonma.edu, bgibson@wheatoncollege.edu, gibson_brian@wheatonma.edu etc.) has to be trained to know what you consider to be spam or not spam. The catch is, you have to classify 200 messages as spam and 200 messages as not spam before the training engine kicks in and starts classifying messages for you. Getting 200 messages classified as spam is a little time consuming, trying to get 200 messages classified as not spam is a long process that several may never complete! You also have to remember that you need to classify 200 spam / 200 not spam messages per account so if you classify a piece of spam that landed in the quarantine area for bgibson@wheatonma.edu it does not count towards your 200 classified spam messages in the bgibson@wheatoncollege.edu account. Try not to get too frustrated, below I'll outline some tricks you can try to make your life easier.

Customizing your quarantine accounts

To better understand the steps outlined in this section, please log into your Barracuda quarantine account(s) by clicking the "click here" link in the most recent quarantine summary you received, or by going to https://mx.wheatonma.edu in a web browser, type in your full email address in the "Username:" field, leave the password blank then press the "Create New Password" button. The Barracuda will email you a link that auto logs you into your account quarantine.

  • I want to make sure a message that comes from a specific email address is never trapped in the quarantine.
    1. While logged into your quarantine, place a check mark next to an email message from the specific person
    2. Press the "Whitelist" button (or the "Whitelist/Not Spam" button, the message will be delivered into your Inbox and the sender's email address will be added to your personal "whitelist". "From:" addresses in your personal whitelist are never quarantined or blocked (unless they have a virus infected attachment).
    3. You can also manage your personal whitelist by clicking on the PREFERENCES link; you should then be on the Whitelist/Blacklist page.
  • I want to make sure a message that comes from a specific email address is always blocked.
    1. While logged into your quarantine, click the PREFERENCES link located at the top, you should then be on the "Whitelist/Blacklist" page.
    2. Type the full email address (ex: sales@marketing_world.com) into the "Blocked Email Addresses and Domains" field and hit the "Add" button.
    3. Be Careful: You could waste a lot of time adding email addresses into the blacklist! Almost all the spammers out there use different "From:" addresses for every message they send out so you could get another message from the same source and it won't be blacklisted. Only add an email address to your blacklist if you know that the spammer uses this "From:" address all the time.
  • I am sick of the Barracuda making my life miserable, I would rather it didn't touch my email messages at all!
    1. Let me preface this section by stating that we are not overly aggressive in scanning your email messages for spam so the likelihood that we are blocking legitimate emails is slim.
    2. If you still wish to shut off all spam scanning for your email address, while logged into your quarantine, click the PREFERENCES link located at the top
    3. Click on the "Spam Settings" link
    4. Select "No" next to the option labeled "Enable Spam Filtering:"
    5. Click the "Save Changes" button
  • I want messages that would normally be quarantined to be delivered to me instead
    1. While logged into your quarantine, click the PREFERENCES link located at the top
    2. Click on the "Quarantine Settings" link near the top
    3. Select "No" at the top next to the option labeled "Enable Quarantine:"
    4. Press the "Save Changes" button
    5. From this point on, any message that would have been caught in your quarantine account will be sent to you and the subject of the message will start with the phrase [QUAR]. Please Note: If you go this route understand that you no longer have the ability to re-classify messages as spam/not spam within the Barracuda. This is not really too big an issue because if you got to this point you were fed up with training the Barracuda anyway!
    6. If you use Webmail to view your email or you use an email client like Eudora or Outlook using the IMAP protocol (most faculty and staff use the POP protocol... jump to step "7" below.) then you can create a mail filtering rule to have any messages with the phrase [QUAR] in the subject get filtered into a separate folder. To do this, log into Webmail and select the "Create New" link in the top left hand corner. Enter a folder name (ex: spam_messages) in the "Folder name:" field and select the "Create" button. Next, select the "Automated Processing" link within Webmail located on the left hand side near the bottom. In the top section labeled "Rules", enter in a new rule in the "Add" field and name it whatever you like (ex: Filter Quarantine Messages). Click the "edit" button next to the new filter you just created. Feel free to add a comment to this new filter but it is not mandatory. In the "Data" pull down menu select "Subject". In the "Operation" pull down menu select "in". In the "Parameter" field enter in "[QUAR]*". From the "Action" pull down menu select "Store in" and in the "Parameters" field enter in the name of the new mailbox you created just for these messages. (ex: spam_messages). Press the "Apply" button. A new "Action" pull down menu should appear, select "Discard" then press the "Apply" button and you are all set. Now when a message comes into the Barracuda for your email address and the system thinks it is spam but is not 100% sure, instead of holding the message hostage on the server within your personal quarantine area it will send it to your email address with the phrase "[QUAR]" at the beginning of the Subject line. Your new mail filter will then take the message from your "Inbox" and move it to your "spam_messages" folder so remember to check this new folder periodically.
    7. If you use an email client like Eudora with the POP protocol (which is what most faculty and staff use) you will have to setup your mail filter within the email client and not within Webmail. Within Eudora, create a new email folder (ex: spam_messages). Next, go to "Tools" then "Filters" and select the "New" button. At the top of this new mail filter make sure that "Incoming" is checked off and for the "Header:" pull down menu select "Subject". Make sure the pull down menu beneath that is set to "contains". In the field to the right of the "contains" pull down menu enter in "[QUAR]". Skip down to the "Action" section below and for the first pull down menu select "Transfer To" and use the new button that appears to the right to select the new folder you created earlier (ex: spam_messages). Lastly, save this new filter by selecting the "File" menu in the top left hand corner then select the "Save" option. Any new messages that would have ended up in your quarantine will now be pulled down into Eudora and automatically moved to your new spam_messages folder.
  • I want to lessen/increase the aggressiveness of the Barracuda for my account
    1. First and foremost, be careful with these settings! If you set an option incorrectly you could end up blocking legitimate email.
    2. A brief description of how the Barracuda rates messages is in order. As messages come in the Barracuda will assign a number to each message according to how "spammy" the message looks. The scale is from 0 to 10 and the higher the number the more likely a message is spam. There are zones within that 0 to 10 range. Starting from the top, any message that gets a score above 7 will automatically be blocked; this is the recommended setting by the manufacturer. These messages NEVER make it into your quarantine area and you never see them in your Inbox. The second zone is between 3.5 and 7 and messages within this range get sent to your quarantine area. There is another range that we do not use at Wheaton (but you can), you can set a range (somewhere above 0) where messages will be passed through to you but they are still thought to be spam. These messages have the phrase "[POTENTIAL SPAM]" added to the beginning of the "Subject:" line within the email message. Lastly, any message that gets a score higher than 0 but below the starting tagging number get delivered to the user without any modifications, these messages are not considered spam.
    3. To change any of these numbers within your personal account (ex: bgibson@wheatonma.edu) first log into your quarantine area (outlined above).
    4. Select the PREFERENCES link.
    5. Select the "Spam Settings" link near the top.
    6. Select "No" next to the option labeled "Use System Defaults" then click the "Save Changes" button.
    7. Move any of the 3 dials up or down or type in a number and when you are done press the "Save Changes" button.
    8. Setting any scoring option to "10" will disable that option (Note that we have disabled the "Tag Score:" option but you could say, disable the "Quarantine Score:" by setting it to "10" and set the "Tag Score:" to "3.5" instead.)
    9. As mentioned earlier, be careful, especially with the "Block Score:" setting. If you set this too low you will end up blocking legitimate messages and there is no (easy) way to retrieve them, other than calling the LIS Infrastructure Department to track down the blocked messages and deliver them to you.
  • I want to receive the quarantine summary messages but less frequently.... once a day is a drag!
    1. You have the option of receiving the quarantine summary messages once a day, once a week or never.
    2. Note: If you do opt to change the frequency we highly recommend that you select a frequency other than "Never". With the frequency set to "Never" you have to remember to periodically check your quarantine.
    3. To change this setting, log into your personal quarantine account (ex: bgibson@wheatonma.edu) outlined above
    4. Click the PREFERENCES link
    5. Next to the "Notification Interval:" option change the selection then press the "Save Changes" button.
  • Can I have my Barracuda quarantine summary messages sent to someone else so they can manage it for me?
    1. To change the email address where Barracuda quarantine messages are sent (ex: to your administrative assistant) log into your personal quarantine account (outlined above)
    2. Click the PREFERENCES link
    3. Next to the "Notification Address:" option enter the destination email address for the quarantine summary messages then press the "Save Changes" button.
  • I put a lot of time and effort into training the Barracuda by classifying messages, how can I be sure this info will not be lost?
    1. To back up your quarantine account training information (also known as a Bayesian database) log into your personal quarantine account (outlined above)
    2. Select the PREFERENCES link
    3. Select the "Spam Settings" link at the top
    4. At the bottom of the page select the "Backup" button next to the option labeled "Backup Bayesian Database:"
    5. After a few seconds your browser will pop up a prompt asking you to save a file locally to your computer, select a destination on your local system (ex: the Desktop) and select the "OK" button.
    6. In the event that our Barracuda anti-spam firewall fails and we lose the individual Bayesian databases you can use the "Browse" button on this same page and upload the Bayesian database you copied down to your local computer
  • I use Outlook for email, are there any extra Barracuda options available to me?
    1. If you use Outlook you are in luck. You can download a plugin for Outlook off the Barracuda login page https://mx.wheatonma.edu and when you receive a message that is spam (or was marked incorrectly as spam) you can classify the message with the push of a button within Outlook. Contact cgpro_admins@wheatonma.edu for more details!