Messages
Clicking on the Messages icon provides access to the Messages window as shown below. This window allows you to change the default settings for how aggressive you wish to be in identifying potential spam email that arrives in your inbox. The Messages window is divided into three sections: Collaborative Filter, Messages Filters and Foreign Language Filters.
Collaborative Filter
There are over 1 million people worldwide who provide input into the Collaborative Filter - they are part of the SonicWALL Global Response Intelligent Defense (GRID) network. Moving the Collaborative slider to the right will make your system more responsive the SonicWALL GRID and thereby block more messages. Moving the Collaborative slider to the left to will make your system less responsive to the SonicWALL GRID and thereby block fewer messages.
Messages Filter
The Messages Filter settings are where you control the aggressiveness of the Adversarial Bayesian engine included as part of SonicWALL Anti-Spam Desktop. The Aggressiveness Message Filter, the first slider bar in the Messages Filter section, sets overall aggressiveness. Moving this slider bar to the right will increase the number of messages considered junk by the system. Moving the slider bar to the left will decrease the number of messages considered junk by the system.
In addition to setting the overall aggressiveness with the Aggressiveness Message Filter, you can also fine-tune your aggressiveness based on the category of the message being evaluated. The different categories we consider are as follows:
- Sexual Content
- Offensive Language
- Get Rich Quick
- Gambling
- Advertisements
- Embedded Images
If a message does not fall into one of these categories, we use the Aggressiveness Message Filter settings as our guide. For each of the different message categories (Sexual Content, Offensive Language, etc.) you can be more aggressive in blocking such messages my moving the appropriate slider bar to the right. The converse is true as you can be less aggressive in blocking messages of a particular category by moving the appropriate slider bar to the left.
It is reasonable to have the slider bars in different positions of aggressiveness for each of the categories.
Foreign Language Filters
SonicWALL Anti-Spam Desktop allows you to block or receive messages that are written in other languages. The language is determined by examining the character set of each message received. The picture below shows the languages you can block or receive.
For each language you can select one of these three options:
- Allow All - this option will allow ALL messages which utilize the character set for that language (i.e. Arabic, Chinese, Greek, etc) to pass through the system and arrive in your inbox - even if a given message is spam.
- Block All - this option will block ALL messages which utilize the character set for that language (i.e. Arabic, Chinese, Greek, etc) and place those message in your junk folder - even if a given message is good.
- No Opinion - this option will let the SonicWALL Anti-Spam Desktop evaluate the message and make a junk or good judgment.
Language Blocking and Allowed & Blocked Lists
Allowed and Blocked lists will bypass language evaluation. For example, a message which arrives from someone on your People allowed list will be delivered to your Inbox even if the message is in the Chinese character set and you are blocking messages in Chinese.