SpamWall technical support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you have a query or issue or require advice or assistance with any matter related to our service we encourage you to contact us so that we can answer your questions and provide advice or assistance when necessary. You can contact us for technical and service support advice or assistance via email at service@spamwall.com or complete and submit our Online Contact Form.

All operating system and software updates are included free of charge along with the service. This includes updates to the SpamWall operating systems as well as automatic hourly and daily updates to Anti-Virus and Spam rules and definitions.

All client SpamWalls as well as the MessageVault Email Archiving and SafeRoute Outbound Email Filtering systems are automatically monitored for connectivity and active services on a continual basis. Server and network monitoring software notifies our technical support people via SMS if a problem is detected or if a request for urgent assistance from a customer is received. Multiple "hot swap" SpamWall units are on standby at all times in the event that an urgent system replacement is required. Should any SpamWall system should stop responding for any reason our technicians are notified immediately and will take appropriate action to resolve the problem, typically in less than 30 minutes.

All SpamWall systems come with a free Instant Replacement Service. Should there be any problems with your SpamWall that impact on the reliability of the system it will be replaced with a new system immediately. Unlike the "instant" replacements offered by some appliance vendors who not only often charge for their replacement service but also take 24 hours or more to deliver the replacement units, SpamWall system replacements are carried out on an around the clock basis 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and in the event of a serious system issue with a SpamWall unit replacements are usually carried out within less than 30 minutes.

The term "MX record” stands for "Mail Exchange" record". An MX record tells mail servers around the world where to send the email for your domain. These records are contained in the "zone file" for your domain on the DNS server or servers which provide DNS service for the domain.

This would usually be either your own DNS servers or the DNS servers of your ISP or hosting company. Additional information related to setting up MX records can be found in the Setting Up Your MX Records section of the SpamWall Operations Manual.

This will depend on who manages the DNS service for your domain(s). Typically, whoever manages your domain or email server will have control of your DNS records. This may be yourself if you have your own DNS servers, your ISP, web hosting provider or your IT person or department. Many ISPs, web hosting companies and domain registries provide a web interface for managing DNS records, while others will change this information on your behalf.

Information on modifying MX records can be found in the Setting Up Your MX Records section of the SpamWall Operations Manual.

If you do not have access to the DNS zone file or related configuration settings for your domain then the technical administrator of your domain, which would likely either be your ISP, web hosting provider, systems administrator or IT department should be able to modify the MX records for you.

If you need advice or assistance with modifying the MX records for your domain to route email to your SpamWall system you can contact support for assistance with this.

Use the online MX lookup tool located here. Enter your domain name and select  "Lookup". This will tell you your mail servers host name or IP address.

If you need advice or assistance with determining the IP address of your mail server or with any other support or service related query or issue you can contact us via email at service@spamwall.com or use our online contact form.

If you have questions or need advice or assistance with modifying your MX records you can contact us via email at the service@spamwall.com address or otherwise complete and submit our online contact form. We can email you the necessary changes and you can forward this info to your ISP, hosting company, systems administrator or IT department. Otherwise, we can provide you with direct assistance if required.

Yes, if you require any assistance with modifying your MX records and can provide us with access to the DNS server(s) which provide service for your domain either via telnet/ssh or via a web interface control panel we can assist you with modifying your MX records. To request assistance you can email us at service@spamwall.com or complete and submit our online contact form.

Due to distributed nature of the DNS system the MX records you have modified or set up to route email to your SpamWall system may not result in all email being directed to your SpamWall system immediately.

It may take up 12-24 hours or more for the new MX information to propagate (be available to all other DNS servers) across the Internet so that all email for any given domain is directed to your SpamWall system. Until propagation is fully completed some email for your domain may be directed to your SpamWall system and some may continue to be directed to your regular email server however no email will be lost or mis-directed during this transition.

It is easy to tell if a particular email message has been processed by your SpamWall system. The "full headers" of email messages you receive which have been processed by your SpamWall system will contain the "X-SPAM-VIRUS-Scanned: Anti-Spam Firewall" tag. Note that these email headers are usually not visible unless you use the "show full headers" option in your email program. You can also use the Mail Log Viewer on your system to view the email processing activity.

Using the SpamWall Spam Firewall to process your email for Spam and Viruses does not affect the security of your email in any way. The SpamWall system does not back up or make copies of your email and the only email messages that are stored on the system are those which have been detected as being Spam or Virus infected.

Your SpamWall system does log some basic information relating to the email messages processed by the system, such as the "from" and to" information, as would any mail server in it's mail log file. This information is accessible only to you as the administrator of your SpamWall via the Mail Log Viewer system incorporated into the SpamWall control panel.

Unlike other Spam Filtering Services your SpamWall system is a dedicated unit and only you will have administrative access to your SpamWall. It is not possible for any other unauthorized third party to access access information associated with the email processed by your SpamWall system.

SpamWall takes data security very seriously. Our privacy policy ensures that no customer data can be accessed by any third party without the customer's explicit permission. Our data security policies and procedures are also among the most stringent and comprehensive in the industry. For more information see the SpamWall Data Security Policy.

Generally users of the SpamWall system would own or have access to their own email server which would either be hosted at their office, an Internet data center, ISP or web hosting provider. However, if you do not have your own mail server it is still possible to use the SpamWall Spam Firewall. You may need to speak to whomever handles the technical aspects of email related services for your domain and ask them to provide advice on how to use the SpamWall with your domain.

Most hosting companies and DNS service providers will not have a problem with assisting you to modify the MX records for your domain so that email can be routed to your SpamWall system for processing. However, should you encounter a problem with this we can provide you with DNS service including an easy to manage control panel access to your own domain zone files so that you can make the necessary changes to your MX records. If required, this service can be included free of charge along with your SpamWall system. Contact us for more information.

Internet email services were not really designed for large messages or attachments and this is why most ISPs and email service providers including Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail etc place a limit of about 25MB on attachments. The default maximum message size setting on the SpamWall systems for emails and attachments is 300MB which should be more than sufficient for practically any circumstances however this setting can increased if required for any reasonable purpose.

With respect to email message and attachment sizes it's important to keep in mind that the 300MB maximum setting for this on the SpamWall systems is much more than most Internet email servers are configured to accept and while it's a rare situation any issues will be seen with email message size and the SpamWall systems themselves more often what happens is that the SpamWall system accepts and processes emails of 100-300MB in size with no problems and then when attempting to deliver messages of this size to the destination email server they are rejected due to being over the receiving email server's size limit.

Yes, you will have full control over whitelisting and blacklisting of IP addresses, domains and email addresses which will be blocked or allowed to route email via your SpamWall system. Information on using the blacklisting and whitelisting functions on your SpamWall system can be found in the System Whitelist and System Blacklist sections of the SpamWall Operations Manual.

Yes, a number of RBL/Blacklist options are available for activation on your SpamWall system such as Spamhaus and SpamCop and others. Information on using the RBL/Blacklist functions on your SpamWall system can be found in the RBL Blacklists section of the SpamWall Operations Manual.

In the event your mail server goes offline, your SpamWall system will queue or "spool" all inbound email messages. Your SpamWall system will queue and continually attempt to deliver the messages every few minutes for up to 5 days. When a destination email server is back online and accepting email all queued email messages should be delivered within a few minutes. If for some reason your mail server is going to be offline for longer than 5 days on all systems with the exception of the base SpamWall Lite edition you can increase the spooling or "Mail Queue Lifetime" period to as much as 15 days in the Advanced Settings screen of the SpamWall control panel. If you have a SpamWall Lite edition system and you need to have the mail queue holding period extended for some reason or if you need a holding period of more than 15 days enabled on your system you can contact support.

The SpamWall does not make any backups of email messages which are processed by the system, it only acts as a secure email "gateway" system for scanning and processing your email for Spam and Viruses before being sent on to your regular mail server. The only emails which are kept on the system are those that have been blocked or quarantined by the system as having been identified as Spam/UCE or Virus infected.

If you require email archiving SpamWall offers a solution called the MessageVault, which is an affordable, secure and dedicated email archiving solution. MessageVault is a hosted email archiving appliance that can archive both inbound and outbound email messages from any Internet connected source providing secure, tamper proof email capture and long term storage management for critical email data. The MessageVault integrates easily with both the SpamWall and the SafeRoute outbound email filtering systems to archive both inbound and outbound email messages under the one integrated, secure and easy to use platform.

The SpamWall system supports SSL/TLS encrypted SMTP delivery so if your mail server supports this as well email can be delivered via the SSL/TLS protocol if desired.

This is no problem. Your SpamWall system is compatible with all mail servers and mail server software and can relay your email to any mail server or IP address anywhere on the Internet. All that you need to do is to log into the SpamWall control panel and change the IP address associated with your former mail server to that of your new mail server in the IP/Domain Setup screen. Unlike with MX records, these changes take effect immediately and your SpamWall system will instantly route your email to the new mail server.

If you have a sales or service related question or if you require advice or assistance with any matter related to our service or your SpamWall system we encourage you to contact us so that we can answer your questions and provide advice or assistance when necessary. You can contact us via email at service@spamwall.com or complete and submit our online contact form.

Once your SpamWall is online you will be contacted by our service department and provided with the IP address and login URL details to your system. All that you need to do is to connect to the IP address or URL provided in your SpamWall setup and configuration letter and use the username and password provided to log into the control panel on your SpamWall system. The SpamWall web interface control panel is compatible with most popular web browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari and most popular handheld devices such as the iPhone and iPad as well as related operating systems such as Android. In general we recommend either Internet Explorer, Chrome or Firefox as the best web browsers to use with the SpamWall control panel.

If you are missing an expected email you can use the Mail Log Viewer in the control panel on your SpamWall system to search for information relating to the delivery of the email. Searches can be made on a variety of criteria including time and date as well as by either partial or complete email address, domain, and IP number associated with the email you are searching references for. You should also search the logs files on your own mail server as it's possible that they may contain information on the message you are looking for.

If you are unable to find the the message reference you are looking for in the Mail Log Viewer you can contact support for additional assistance with this if required.

The SpamWall system in it's default configuration with it's multi-layer Spam Filtering Technology and default set of Spam Scoring Levels is able to detect and block or filter up to 98% or more of all Spam/UCE received by the system.

The Spam Scanning & Filtering engine on the SpamWall system also incorporates a number of "self-tuning" and "auto-learning" mechanisms including Bayesian Analysis and Learning, which are able to automatically increase accuracy and sensitivity of the system over time.

It is possible to increase the percentage of Spam/UCE detected and either blocked, quarantined or tagged by modifying the "Spam Score Levels" in the Spamfilter Config screen of the SpamWall control panel. By "tuning" the system over time you will be able to achieve the optimum level of Spam/UCE detection and management for your particular email user base and the specific type and content of email messages received by your users.

For more information on tuning your SpamWall system to achieve the optimum level of Spam/UCE detection and management see the section on Tuning the SpamWall System in the SpamWall Operations Manual.

The SpamWall Spam Firewall system is able to provide high Spam/UCE detection rates of up to 98% or more and has one of the lowest false positive ratings in the industry. In it's default configuration the SpamWall system is designed to minimize false positives (legitimate email messages being identified and blocked as Spam).

With no additional configuration or tuning the false positive rate is typically at less than 0.1%, or less than one in every 10,000 email messages processed by the system.

If you see email messages that are clearly not Spam being diverted to the Spam Quarantine you can prevent this from happening by either placing the email address or domain of the sender in the System Whitelist or otherwise by modifying the Spam Score Levels in the Spamfilter Config screen of the SpamWall control panel. By "tuning" the system over time you will be able to achieve the optimum level of Spam/UCE detection and management with the lowest possible number of "false positives".

For more information on tuning your SpamWall system to achieve the optimum level of Spam/UCE detection and management see the section on Tuning the SpamWall System in the SpamWall Operations Manual.

Email address and domain blacklisting (and whitelisting) on systems such as the SpamWall is based on what is known as the "envelope sender" which would be the real sender address or domain and this can be different from the "Reply to" or "From" sender seen in an actual email message. It is this "envelope sender" address that is the one which blacklisting or whitelisting needs to be based on.

More detailed information on this can be found in the System Whitelist and System Blacklist sections of the SpamWall Operations Manual.

All SpamWall systems with the exception of the base SpamWall Lite model have a comprehensive API that can be used for most regular management functions including such things as adding and deleting domains and user accounts, managing whitelist/blacklist information and changing user account passwords. For more information see the SpamWall API section of the SpamWall Operations Manual.

The "spoofing" or "forging" of the sender email address is a common tactic used by Spammers in an attempt to try and get their messages through on the assumption that many people whitelist their own email addresses or even entire domains.

On all SpamWall systems with the exception of the base SpamWall Lite model there is an Advanced Settings screen which includes an option to enable a Spoof Protection module which is able to help to deal with these sorts of messages. If you have a SpamWall Lite edition system and do not have access to the Spoof Protection option you can contact support who may still be able to activate this on your system.

The SpamWall and the Barracuda are similar systems but the SpamWall Spam Firewall is a hosted email gateway appliance, which would be something like a "hosted Barracuda". This means the service is a combined fully hosted hardware and software solution. The hosting of the SpamWall appliance system as well as software updates, routine system maintenance and required bandwidth and data transfer are all included in the package for the one low monthly service fee, which is usually lower than the monthly or yearly license or update fees for a similar capacity self-hosted Anti-Spam appliance solution like the Barracuda.

If you purchased your own Anti-Spam type hardware appliance such as the Barracuda for instance there would not only be the one time up front payment of as much as several thousand dollars involved to purchase the unit but there would still be monthly charges ranging from around $40/month to several hundred dollars per month for their system update service depending on which model you purchased. With the SpamWall there are no up front costs and the monthly fee, which includes not only things like regular automatic updates to Spam Rules and Virus Definitions but necessary bandwidth and data transfer as well, is often lower than the monthly licence or update fees for a self hosted Anti-Spam appliance.

While under some circumstances the additional up front and on going cost of a self-hosted Spam appliance system might be justified there is a general trend towards moving these sorts of services from on-premises devices such as the Barracuda to Cloud / SaaS type platforms both for economic reasons as well as to take the burden of dealing with all of the unwanted and abusive email related traffic off of the local email server and network and also relieve IT personnel from having to constantly deal with the many adverse issues related to it.

If you have made a configuration mistake on your SpamWall which has resulted on your being "locked out" for some reason or if it has caused the system to malfunction in some manner our technical support are available to respond and fix things for you on a 24/7/365 basis. If you require technical support advice or assistance with any matter related to your SpamWall system you can contact support via email at service@spamwall.com or complete and submit our online contact form.

SpamWall technical support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you have a query or issue or require advice or assistance with any matter related to our service our your SpamWall system we encourage you to contact us so that we can answer your questions and provide advice or assistance when necessary.

You can generally expect a reply to non-urgent queries and issues within a 6-12 hour time frame depending on the day of the week with genuinely urgent matters and issues being responded or attended to within 5-15 minutes on a 24/7/365 basis.

You can contact us via email at service@spamwall.com or complete and submit our Online Contact Form.