From UntangleWiki
About Outgoing Server Email
The Untangle Server sends emails for several reasons:
- Various Software Products send end-users emails, informing them of malicious payloads such as viruses.
- The Quarantine facility sends users a daily digest of the spams they received.
- The Untangle Reports sends daily summary reports to administrators about Untangle Server activity.
Configuring Server Email Traffic
In order for the Untangle Server to send email, you must configure the Untangle Server with your outgoing mail server (also called SMTP server). If your company does not have its own outgoing mail server, consider that ISPs typically provide an outgoing mail server as part of their Internet service. This mail server accepts email messages.
- For someone that uses web email (for example, Yahoo or GMail), you may not even be aware that you have an ISP-provided email account.
- If you use ISP-provided email, and use a mail client like Outlook, Thunderbird or Mozilla mail to read your email, you at one time provided your email client the names of the incoming and outgoing mail servers. Your Untangle Server needs this information too.
To configure outgoing server email:
- From the Navigation Pane, click Config tab > Email. The Email Config window launches.
- Click the Outgoing Server tab, and select the Send Email using the specified SMTP Server radio button.
- Specify the following properties as shown in Figure, Configure Untangle Server To Send Email:
- SMTP Email Server. The name of your SMTP mail server (for example, mail.mycompany.com or 4.79.181.14). Your company might have its own internal SMTP Email Server or use an Internet Server Provider's SMTP Email Server.
- Port. The standard port for sending email via SMTP is 25. You should only change this setting if you know your mail server is using a non-standard port.
- Login, Password. For servers which use authenticated SMTP (SMTP which requires a username and password), the Login and Password fields should be specified. Otherwise, these can be left blank.
- From Address. Provides an email address for the sender, which is your Untangle Server. You can accept the default, Untangle@local.domain.
- Click the Save Settings button.
- Click the Run Email Test button, specify your email address, and click the Proceed button. If you receive an Untangle Server Test Message email, your Untangle Server is configured properly.
About Quarantine
As outlined in Creating Custom Policies, outgoing mail is not quarantined by default.
The Untangle Server has the ability to store emails suspected of containing unwanted content. This repository, a Quarantine, can then be reviewed to ensure no emails were mistakenly labeled as unwanted (sometimes called a false positive). The decision to quarantine emails is made by each Software Product (for example, Spam Blocker). There are two different types of users that have access to the Quarantine:
- End user: Person within the protected network who receives email. End users interact with the Quarantine using a web interface. End users can purge/release their own emails through a web interface, but cannot launch the Untangle Server's administrative interface.
- Administrator: Person with administrative privileges. The administrator uses the Untangle Server's administrative interface, Untangle Client, to control quarantined emails for many users.
The Quarantine stores emails that the Untangle Server suspects contain unwanted content (for example, Spam or phishing). This storage is done on a per-email address basis. For example, if escott@yourcompany.com receives three Spam emails in a day, those three emails are quarantined for escott. The collection of emails for a given address is said to be an inbox.
If you specify that users receive a Quarantine Daily Digest, the Untangle Server emails users daily reports that contain a browser link to the their specific Quarantine inbox. The daily digest emails are delivered in HTML format, such that they contain links to a web server. The web server is housed within the Untangle Server. From the Quarantine, users can manage their quarantined email. End users can release emails, causing them to be sent to their email clients, or delete them. In this way, the Quarantine Daily Digest emails enable end-users to maintain their inboxes.
Some users will choose not to act on (ignore) their digest emails. If a user ignores their inbox for many days (and receives many spams), their inbox will grow. This is not a concern, as the Untangle Server automatically deletes emails after a fixed period of time. This time period is configurable, as discussed in Setting Time Period To Automatically Delete Quarantined Email.
Setting Time Period To Automatically Delete Quarantined Email
By default, the Untangle Server deletes quarantined email every 28 days.
To set the time period:
- From the Navigation Pane, click the Config tab > Email. The Email Config window appears.
- Click the Quarantine tab, and click the General Setting tab.
- In the table, specify how often (in days) that you want the Untangle Server to delete quarantined email, and click the Save Settings button.
Specifying Who Manages Quarantined Email
Untangle Server enables you to do the following:
- Enable Spam Blocker to quarantine email for some users and not for other users, and provide specific users the ability to manage their quarantined email themselves. To do so, you need to remove quarantinable addresses from the default configuration.
- Specify that a dedicated email account manage specific users quarantined email, or specify that a dedicated email account manage specific distribution list's quarantined email.
To remove quarantinable addresses:
In order for email recipients to manage their quarantined email, users must receive a Quarantined Daily Digest. If a user's email is quarantined, that user receives a Quarantined Daily Digest by default. The Quarantined Daily Digest contain a URL to the user's quarantine inbox. To learn more about this feature, go to About Quarantine.
When you configure Spam Blocker to scan and then quarantine email, it does so for all users—unless you specify otherwise. If you configure Spam Blocker to quarantine all users' email, and you want all users to manage their respective quarantined email, you do not need to do anything. However, if you do not want Spam Blocker to quarantine email for all users, and, instead, you simply want Spam Blocker to mark some users' email as spam, then perform the following procedure.
- From the Navigation pane, click the Config tab.
- Click the Quarantine tab, then click the Quarantinable Addresses tab.
- Delete the default row that contains the wildcard (*).
- Create a table row for each user whose email you want Spam Blocker to quarantine, and specify users' email address in their respective table row. For all users not listed in the table, Spam Blocker simply marks the email as spam.
- Click the Save Settings button.
Tip: Depending on your Exchange Server, by default it might accept email from a spammer when the email is sent with the correct domain (@untangle.com)—but the wrong email address (for example, nosuchemployee@untangle.com). You might be inclined to use this list of quarantinable addresses to include all your company's legitimate email accounts thereby rejecting all unknown email accounts. Before you do so, consider configuring your Exchange Server to reject such email as this technique will meet your needs and cut down on network traffic. Microsoft Exchange 2003 or later has a server setting that rejects email destined for unknown email accounts even when the domain is correct.
To change who manages quarantined email:
If you do not want specific users to manage their own quarantined email, or you do not want users to manage quarantined email for a distribution list (for example, sales@untangle.com) to which they subscribe, forward those users' or distribution list's quarantined email to a dedicated email account. That dedicated email account receives the Quarantine Digest for those users or distribution list.
- From the Navigation pane, click the Config tab.
- Click the Quarantine tab, then click the Quarantinable Forwards tab.
- Do the following:
- Create a table row for each user or distribution list.
- In the distribution list address column, specify one of the following:
- The email address for the user that you do not want to manage quarantined email.
- The email address for the distribution list.
- In the send to address column, specify the address that should manage the quarantined email. This send to address can be any dedicated email account. Consider creating one email account to manage all distribution lists' quarantined email, or assign a specific user's email address based on your company's workflow.
- Click the Save Settings button.
Resending Quarantined Daily Digests
If a user accidentally deletes the Quarantined Daily Digest, you can resend the Quarantined Daily Digest.
To resend digests:
- From a browser, type in the Untangle Server's External IP address followed by /quarantine. The Request Quarantine Digest Email window appears.
- Type in the email address of the user, and click submit.
Monitoring Quarantined Email
You can monitor email recipients quarantined email. To learn more about quarantined email, go to About Quarantine. You can also enable email recipients to monitor their own email as outlined in Specifying Who Manages Quarantined Email.
To browse the quarantine repository for unsolicited email:
- From the Navigation Pane, click the Config tab > Email. The Email Config window appears.
- Click the Quarantine tab, and click the Release & Purge tab. The Release & Purge table lists quarantined email messages by email address. This email address represents a user's inbox.
- In the table, select an email address, and click the Show detail button. The Email Quarantine Details window appears, and lists all the quarantined emails for the email address that you selected.
Next Step: To purge or release the emails, go to Releasing Wanted Email and Purging Unwanted Email.
Declaring an Email Sender as Safe
You can declare that a given sender does not send unwanted email and to instruct the Untangle Server to never consider emails from that given sender to be unsolicited. The set of these good senders is your safelist. Populate your safelist based on emails that were incorrectly quarantined.
Note: If you choose not to populate a safelist, there is no negative effect on the overall Untangle Server.
To declare an email sender as safe:
- From the Navigation Pane, click the Config tab > Email. The Email Config window appears.
- Click the From-Safe List tab, and do one of the following:
- If you want to allow all users to receive email from the sender:
- Click the Global tab.
- Click the add (plus) button to the left of the table. A new row appears in the table.
- In the new row, specify the email address of the sender, and click the Save Settings button.
- If you want to allow a specific user to receive email from the sender, the user needs to add the sender to their safe list from their quarantine digest.
Releasing Wanted Email and Purging Unwanted Email
You can manage email recipients quarantined email. To learn more about quarantined email, go to About Quarantine. You can also enable email recipients to monitor their own email as outlined in Specifying Who Manages Quarantined Email. However, you might need to maintain an end-user inboxes if that user is on vacation.
To release wanted email and purge unwanted email:
Before You Begin: Locate the email that you want to release or purge. Go to Monitoring Quarantined Email.
- From the Email Quarantine Details window, do one of the following:
- Click Purge selected button. The Purge selected button causes all emails within a given inbox to be deleted. This is the same as an end-user triggering a delete of all emails from the web application.
- Click Release selected button. The Release selected button causes all emails within a given inbox to be sent to the email address of the inbox. This is the same as an end-user triggering a release of all emails from the web application.
