What is MailFoundry?

MailFoundry is an anti-spam system which we run on our network to help stop spam and viruses from reaching your mailbox.

How does it work?

The MailFoundry server scans incoming e-mail messages looking for spam or viruses. This scanning is purely automatic, e-mail messages are not read or reviewed by any humans. Messages which are thought by the system to contain either spam or viruses are stored in a quarantine, a holding area on the server, instead of being delivered to your mailbox.

A quarantine digest is generated by the system every day at 3:30 PM, to notify you of any e-mail messages which were recently placed into your quarantine. You may review what was held by the system, and release any messages which were incorrectly quarantined (these are usually referred to as "false positives") to your mailbox.

The MailFoundry system has the lowest measured occurrence of false positives of the systems we tested, and this was one of our main criteria for choosing this appliance.

What is a quarantine digest?

A quarantine digest is an email message which is sent to you automatically by the MailFoundry system. It contains a list of e-mail messages which have been caught and stored by the system, and provides links for you to interact with the system.

Click on the "View" link To view an e-mail message. Click on the "Release" link to release the message from your quarantine into your mailbox. If MailFoundry has accidentally caught a message which is clearly not spam, click on the "Release & Report" link. This releases the message into your mailbox, and helps the system correctly identify similar messages in the future.

If all of the e-mail messages listed in your quarantine digest are spam, you do not need to do anything. The system will not notify you about them again, and they will be automatically deleted from your quarantine.

How do I opt out of receiving quarantine digests?

ipHouse staff are able to make configuration changes to the MailFoundry system. E-mail support@iphouse.com and ask that you no longer receive quarantine digests.

How do I allow senders to bypass the quarantine?

You may add people who frequently send you email to a "whitelist" and prevent them from being trapped in the quarantine. This only bypasses the spam filtering system, all email messages are still checked for viruses. E-mail support@iphouse.com to have users added to your quarantine whitelist.

Is a web interface available?

This is currently being worked on.

Why did I receive two quarantine digests today?

We have two mailfoundry systems running side-by-side for redundancy. If one mailfoundry fails, mail can still be processed through the other. They are intended to operate as a single cluster, with a single combined digest, but this option isn't finished in the mailfoundry software yet. So, for now, each system sends its own digest.