Spam Firewall F.A.Q.
Q: What is the “The Computer Works SPAM Firewall?”
A: The Computer Works SPAM Firewall is a server which screens all incoming e-mail destined to our customers' e-mail in boxes, and checks it for viruses, worms, and SPAM oriented e-mail before it even gets to your inbox.
The Computer Works SPAM Firewall unit is not where your e-mail box resides, it is just a temporary place where you, the end user, can easily monitor e-mail traffic passing through, attempting to be delivered to your e-mail box.
The Computer Works SPAM Firewall saves you from having to download all the spam and viruses which are sent to your e-mail account each day. It allows you to deal with the junk mail at your leisure.
Q: I have received a “Summary” of quarantine and blocked e-mails from support@tcworks.net, but when I try to log in, it tells me wrong password. I am entering my regular e-mail password, am I missing something?
A: There is no synchronization occurring between your regular e-mail (i.e. username@arbbs.net) account, and its password to the barracuda unit. The unit will create this “summary” of quarantined e-mails and send it to your attention to your regular e-mail box. It has a link for you to log into the unit and verify each e-mail you received as to decide if, indeed it is okay to be blocked, allow it to enter your e-mail inbox, or even put in on your white list. However, this is a temporary link with a temporary password, which you do not need to even try to remember, but it will expire after 24 hours. This does not mean you will not be able to enter again into the unit, but you need to reset the password that has expired.
To do this, follow the link provided to you on your e-mail, and when you get to the Barracuda page stating “Error: Session Expired”, enter your full e-mail address in the “Username” field, and click on the button below reading “Create New Password”. This will instruct the barracuda server to e-mail you a new password just to enter to the unit and check the list of blocked/quarantined e-mails.
Important: This will not change your regular e-mail password; you do not have to do any changes to your e-mail settings.
After you click on the “Create New Password”, and you receive a new e-mail on your inbox, which looks like the following example:
Welcome to the Barracuda Spam Firewall. This message contains the information you will need to access your Spam Quarantine and Preferences.
Your account has been set to the following username and password:
Username: yourusername@arbbs.net
Password: yourusernameXxx
You may login using the following URL: http://65.66.76.9:8000/cgi-bin/index.cgi
Please be sure to change your password.
NOTE: username@arbbs.net will be different for each user. It will be your own username.
At this point, you can either return to the main login page of the barracuda at http://65.66.76.9:8000/cgi-bin/index.cgi, enter your full e-mail address and the password provided in the “Password” field, as indicated above.
OR
Simply click on the URL link provided to you, which already contains your username and temporary password assigned to your account on the barracuda server. You will then automatically enter your personal settings.
Q: Will I have to keep resetting this temporary password every time I need to log into the unit?
A: No, absolutely not. You do not have to reset the password every time.
For security reasons, the temporary password e-mailed to you is meant to be, precisely, temporary. Once you log into the unit, you will find at the top menu the option “Preferences”. If you click on that tag, there will be another button, underneath the main menu, reading “Security”. Click on that one. In this area, you can enter the old password, which was e-mailed to you in by the unit, and a new password.
By design, the temporarily created password is long and it contains upper case and lower case letters and numbers. We strongly encourage you to choose a password which follows the same policy, that is, use upper and lower case letters and numbers and at least eight (8) characters in length. This is done with the purpose of preventing hackers (and other unwelcome guests) to guess your password.
Tip: Setting your password the same as your e-mail account makes this easy to remember and use.
Once you have saved your password, you can return to the Barracuda server URL, and simply enter your e-mail address and your password to login.
Q: I am not sure to fully understand the Quarantine Inbox menu. What do the links mean, etc?
A: The Quarantine Inbox screen is meant to provide you with a user-friendly interface to the barracuda server, which has put “on-hold” or blocked several e-mails, which are most likely SPAM. This box, which is not your e-mail box, can be seen as a “temporary detention center”. It is a place the barracuda unit utilizes to detain certain “suspicious” e-mail, and provide you, the end user, with the last word as to deliver it one time only occurrence, white list it, or delete it.
The screen looks like the following:
There are two tags in the upper part. "Quarantine Inbox" and "Preferences". Use the Quarantine Inbox to review e-mail in “detention”.
At this point, you can either select individual e-mails using the check boxes located to the left of each e-mail, and then proceed to click on one of the buttons above indicating “Deliver”, “Whitelist” or “Delete” in order to perform that action to the group of e-mails you have check marked, or you can individually click on the links on the right side, below the "Actions" column, reading "Deliver", "Whitelist", and "Delete".
“Deliver” will release the selected e-mail(s) from quarantine and allow the e-mail to be delivered to your inbox immediately.
Whitelist will add the senders e-mail address to a list of e-mails from people you would like to be delivered regardless of content. Thus, any e-mail on your whitelist will be delivered to your e-mail box, no questions asked.
You may view what addresses are in your whitelist and add / delete this list by going to the "Preferences" tab and selecting "Whitelist".
Delete will permanently delete the selected e-mail(s) and report this e-mail, as SPAM, to aid in the Barracuda system learning what suspicious e-mails are truly spam.
Q: What are the different menus, inside the "Preferences" tab, used for?
A: The Barracuda unit is a very versatile server, and it allows the each end user to configure some of the settings in a per-user basis. This is done because people tend to have different preferences as to what kind of e-mail they wish or not to receive, and while there is a global setting for some pure, beyond doubt, obvious SPAM, there are other types of e-mails, which may or may not be considered SPAM depending who do you ask. The Barracuda designers understood this, and provided the end user with a degree of control over his/her own e-mails. This is where the Preferences tab comes handy.
It has the following options, which can be selected by clicking on them:
Quarantine Enable/Disable:
Spam Filter Enable / Disable:
Whitelist / Blacklist:
Quarantine Notification:
Security:
