[thegame]

We are currently running a BES and recently purchased a few new phones. We only have a small number of users. They were previously on a verizon blackberry. They have since purchased the Blackberry Perl through AT&T. The problem I am having now is that one of the users is complaining about getting a lot more spam than before. They have a Cloudmark spam filter running on their desktop machines at all times. I recently went into the users properties and found that it was syncing the spam folder. I changed that to just sync the inbox and the user still seems to be receiving spam. Is there any way to fix this? I was trying to think of some sort of answer and all I could come up with is if I could set how often the BES checked for new mail on the exchange server but I do not think that is possible. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[autsoldnow]

Originally Posted by thegame

We are currently running a BES and recently purchased a few new phones. We only have a small number of users. They were previously on a verizon blackberry. They have since purchased the Blackberry Perl through AT&T. The problem I am having now is that one of the users is complaining about getting a lot more spam than before. They have a Cloudmark spam filter running on their desktop machines at all times. I recently went into the users properties and found that it was syncing the spam folder. I changed that to just sync the inbox and the user still seems to be receiving spam. Is there any way to fix this? I was trying to think of some sort of answer and all I could come up with is if I could set how often the BES checked for new mail on the exchange server but I do not think that is possible. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Is your BES for Exchange? If so you will need to install a antispam package for Exchange that works on the SMTP level.

I use a combination of IMF and Trend Scanmail 7.0 for Exchange.

If you are using Domino you will have to figure out what works best there.

Here at ASN they have 60 BES users, we trap over 10,000 spam emails every 3 days with IMF, and I am not sure of the exact number that Trend filters out.

Andrew

[hdawg]

You really should look to something that filters mail before it hits the desktop. If you have a spam filter on your desktop, depending on how it is filtering it isn't going to have any benefit to the BB's as the mail will already be delivered to the HH.

Listen to autsoldnow's advise and look to filter on the server level ... or at the MX level using a 3rd party service / product

[Frank Castle]

We deal with a million+ spam messages a day and I cannot stress enough getting a solid perimerter device to do your spam management. Don't even let it hit your mail servers. Right now the appliance we use validates email addresses and if they are not in the GAL they get dropped. For stuff that gets through it is then processed through another server that checks for spam, adult content and all content policies before it's handed off to the 1st email server.

I realize not everyone needs that kind of setup and it has a $$ but if your a large company and getting spam you can't go wrong with a appliance outside.

[jgb@etree]

I'll echo what others have said here. Your best bet is to process/filter spam BEFORE it gets to your exchange server. You can either place an anti-spam server/appliance in front of your mail server(s) or buy a managed service where you point your MX at the MSP and lock down your mail server(s) so they they can only communicate with the MSP's server(s).

I'm running the Managed Service Provider route (MessageLabs) and have been for the past 4 years or so. It works VERY well. An added bonus in a business that has regulatory/compliance concern in regards to email retention is that any of these solutions will help save money because you won't have to archive, index and retain all of the spam for X years (6 in my case) since they were processed and weeded out before they ever reach your network.

[ladydi]

another thing to consider is what e-mail address is the spam going to? did you verify that it isn't coming from the blackberry.net account? The user could have set that up and is getting spammed by it, or their own BIS account.

But, I heartily agree with the others about filtering at the exchange server or before. Desktop filtering is ineffective with BB and a good front end spam filter/appliance is going to save the load on your exchange server. We use Brightmail for exchange on our relay server. I never get spam

[Ugg]

Yes, spam processing before Exchange makes more sense. We use Spamassassin here FWIW - no idea if it's any better or worse than the alternatives.

We do see the false positives and false negatives though, so we don't delete spam on receipt but allow people to use an Exchange rule (server side) to move it to a client "spam" folder. It's then up to people whether they sync that with their Blackberries or not.

No idea how to effectively deal with spam to BIS addresses, though...

[jgb@etree]

Originally Posted by Ugg

No idea how to effectively deal with spam to BIS addresses, though...

1. Never, ever, give out your @carrier.blackberry.net address. Capiche?
2. Pray

Even taking these steps, you'll get a piece of spam every now and then when a spammer does a dictionary attack trying to spam @carrier.blackberry.net addresses.