Barracuda Spam Firewall                

      UTPA Faculty, Staff, and Students have a new email spam filter to protect against unwanted email messages. Barracuda SPAM Firewall will filter email for all campus email accounts before it gets to your mailbox. You will be able to view quarantined messages and modify the default settings allowing more or less email through the filter.

About this documentation

This website is designed to introduce you to the Barracuda spam filtering system, and help you to set the filters to your desired preferences. Follow the links below to see information on these topics and be sure to view all the documentation presented here. If you have any further questions, please call the UTPA IT HelpDesk at (956) 381-2020.

How Does Barracuda Work?

Messages are checked when they arrive and directed to your mailbox or Quarantine based on a score value. You will receive a daily Spam Quarantine Summary email containing a list of all messages Barracuda has quarantined for the day. The email allows you to manage the messages and take measures if legitimate email is quarantined.

Daily Spam Notification

You will begin receiving daily reports on the email messages that the Barracuda system has captured as spam. You can use these reports to stay informed about the messages being quarantined.

The easiest way to log into Barracuda is by clicking on the link at the bottom of your daily notification.

Logging in to Barracuda

In order to set your spam preferences, you must log into Barracuda. You can either login to Barracuda by clicking on the link at the bottom of your Spam Quarantine Summary notification (recommended) or manually logging in. Following the link on the daily Spam Quarantine Summary will take you in without entering your UTPA email username and password.

If you choose to login to Barracuda manually, you can link securely here: https://barracuda.utpa.edu 

You will be presented with a login screen similar to the one below. Your username should be entered in the form of emailusername@utpa.edu.

NOTE:  The "Get Mail Client Plugins Here" link is currently disabled.  Further testing is needed to evaluate the load it places on our email servers.  Once the Windows Outlook plugin is available, a notification email will be sent.

Setting SPAM Preferences

To set your email filtering preferences, click on the Preferences tab. From there, you may choose Whitelist/Blacklist or Quarantine Settings.

Adding friends and colleagues to your Whitelist ensures those messages will be delivered regardless of spam-like content. To add email addresses to your 'whitelist' and deliver the message to your regular mailbox, click the select box next to the 'good' email that was quarantined and then click 'whitelist'.

If you prefer to not receive messages from specific senders, add them to the Black List and they will be immediately deleted. Use this option with caution, messages cannot be recovered.

 

Managing the Lists

Your Barracuda site displays all addresses you have entered into the lists. They can be managed at any time in the Preference section of your account.

Managing the Quarantine Folder

Barracuda allows you to view a list of messages in your email quarantine. From there, you can classify the messages as Spam or Not Spam. However, marking messages as spam has little value for most users and takes much longer than simply deleting the messages.  To delete an entire page of messages at a time, click on the check box to the left of the 'date received' header at the top of the list (which selects all of the messages on the page) and select 'delete'.  You can choose to:

• Delete the message from the server
• Whitelist (add the sender to your Whitelist)
• Deliver the message to your Inbox

Select the messages by clicking on the checkbox, then click the button above the list to perform the action. You may also click on the links beside the messages to perform these actions. Be sure to check your quarantine folder often to prevent losing any wanted email messages. The spam messages will be automatically be deleted after 10 days if you take no action.

Barracuda Spam FAQ

The University of Texas - Pan American has installed a new spam-filtering system made by Barracuda Networks. The following are the answers to some frequently asked questions about this new system.

How does it work? 

The Barracuda Spam Firewall is a stand-alone system dedicated to running programs that filter out spam and viruses from our email. All email arriving at UTPA first passes through this filter. A variety of methods are used to test email. First, the email is compared to a "blacklist" of known spammers. Most spam originates from a relatively small number of hard-core spammers, and many of their email servers are tracked by anti-spam services, who publish these blacklists. Similarly, most spammers send the same message to millions of recipients making it possible to "fingerprint" bulk mailings and then test our incoming email against that fingerprint.

Finally, and most powerfully, the system employs Bayesian statistical analysis of every recipient’s own email to distinguish good email from bad. The system will actually learn the difference between your own personal valid email and your spam.

Every piece of incoming email is assigned a score based on these tests. Email assigned exceptionally high scores is certainly spam and is "blocked", that is, it is simply deleted. Email that is probably, but not certainly, spam is saved, but "quarantined" on the spam filter. The remaining email is probably all valid and is passed on to the email server for delivery.

When you have quarantined email, the spam filter will send you an email notification. This notification includes a link to the filter's web page, where you can review the suspected spam and/or customize the filter to your own tastes. This web page is at https://barracuda.utpa.edu. The username is just your email address, and your password is the same one you use to log into your email.

The filter web page will display all of your quarantined email. You can teach the filter the difference between good and bad email by clicking on the checkboxes next to the messages in question, and then clicking either the “Spam” or “Not Spam” button. If a piece of email is one that you expect to receive regularly (such as a message from a mailing list), you may click “Whitelist” to permanently exempt that sender from being filtered. Finally, you may then click on either “Delete” or “Deliver” to remove the spam or allow a good message to proceed.

I still see some spam, so is this thing working?

Yes. As described above, the Barracuda spam filtering system uses many methods for detecting spam, but it can take some time for the system to learn what kind of email we want and what we consider spam.

Am I losing any legitimate email? 

No. We have configured the filter such that only the worst sorts of spam are “blocked” and deleted at the filter. All other questionable email is “quarantined” for your review. No legitimate email should be blocked. The real question is whether there is good email being quarantined. By default, you will be notified daily of any quarantined email. You may change this to a weekly notification (or turn it off altogether). When you visit the filter’s web page, you may see some good email quarantined. If you do, check the box in front of the message and press the “Not Spam” button (as described above), this will help train the system. Then, press the “Deliver” button and the email will be delivered to your inbox.

How much spam does UTPA really get anyway? 

Currently, about 87% of the email messages received in a week by UTPA are spam. That is approximately 75,000+ spam messages a day.

Can I get to my quarantine box or preferences from outside of the campus network?

Yes. You can log into Barracuda at any time from any computer online by visiting the following link:  https://barracuda.utpa.edu.

What if I forgot my password or username for the Barracuda? 

Your username and password on the Barracuda spam filtering system is always your UTPA email address (emailusername@utpa.edu) and password. If you have forgotten your UTPA email username and/or password please call the UTPA IT HelpDesk at (956) 381-2020 for prompt assistance.

I'm expecting an email, and the sender tells me it was blocked. How do I correct this?

Contact the UTPA IT HelpDesk at (956) 381-2020 for help with this. Be sure to do this quickly because the Barracuda holds blocked/quarantined email for a limited amount of time based on how much disk space it has. Please make note of your email address, the email address of the sender, and the approximate date and time the email was sent.

What is the Barracuda MS Outlook Plugin?

The Barracuda MS Outlook Plugin is a plugin for the Windows versions of Outlook. It requires Windows 98/2000/NT/XP. The plugin allows a user to classify messages as spam or not-spam right from their desktop. This classification performs Bayesian learning and results in higher accuracy for the Barracuda Spam Firewall.

The plugin performs the same functionality as classification from the Message Log, except all feedback is stored in a per-user Bayesian database on the system. This mechanism prevents user's from compromising the global Bayesian database and results more specific scoring due to learning about a user's personal email preferences.

More information will be provided in the future once the plugin is made available.

I didn't receive a Daily Spam Notification. Is something wrong with my email account?

No. If your email account didn't receive any spam, you won't receive a summary for that day.

Other Questions? 

Please contact the UTPA IT HelpDesk by phone (956) 381-2020, email helpdesk@utpa.edu, or visit the UTPA IT ServiceDesk located in ASB 1.102.