[TanBrae]

email. Hopefully with the capabilities of having emails sent to specific addresses come to a "filtering" address first. Does that make sense? Here's the scenario:

My employer has a freakish fascination with spam/phishing. She opens it - doesn't matter if it's about colon cleansing, weight loss, "bigger and better", she opens it. As I am the administrator of the website, I do have access to her mail, but the filtering system used by our host is not great, and it's kind of a pain to have to go through all her emails before I allow them to pass to her inbox. Not to mention that if she leaves her inbox open, which she frequently does, I no longer have access to her mailbox through our host. She has caused multiple infections to her computer, and a few to the computers networked to hers.

I have asked our host about re-routing her emails so I can better filter them, but never get an answer - they just tell me to use the filter system (works a lot like OE's filtering) and their SpamAssassin, which I can't understand. Their directions for that are in some language that is foreign to me! LOL I know there has to be a way to do this because don't most of the large corporations apply some sort of re-routing for security for their emails? I am having a difficult time keeping up with deleting all her junk because she opens it, and sometimes replies to it!

Does anybody have any suggestions? Oh, and is there a way to have OE shut down if idle after a certain time? I cannot get her trained not to leave her inbox open when she leaves her desk!

[cwwozniak]

Originally Posted by TanBrae

She has caused multiple infections to her computer, and a few to the computers networked to hers.

Does your company have any kind of up to date anti-virus software running on ALL of their computers? Some of them come with the option of e-mail filtering. Corporate versions also usually have some provision to allow you mange the applications on each computer from a central computer or server.

[TanBrae]

a problem on the other two computers. WE (my co-worker and I) don't open spam! I recently uninstalled Norton 360 from the problematic computer. It came up with an error that they wanted me to pay to fix. (pay for a tech call) I refuse to do that - they ought to support their product better than that, and after having done an install last year and being hit with "something" (we lost files during the installation - in the My Documents folder, the files started blinking and when I opened them to see what was going on, they were empty. A couple outside tech people said I'd gotten hit during the time Norton was installing. ), I am no longer a fan of Norton. So, I'm looking for a better way of controlling what goes to her inbox, and it would be preferable if it's something she doesn't know I'm doing because she won't like that I'm doing it, but I HAVE to keep our computers safe and she won't cooperate.

[cwwozniak]

I would not be trying to do anything that your employer did not know about or did not fully support what you were doing. Is this person the owner, president, CEO, etc. or can you talk to someone higher up at the company about her dangerous computer habits?

[TanBrae]

Yes, I have spoken with our board of directors, but since I'm the "tech support" person, they have all said to just "do what I have to do to keep things safe". And, fwiw and thank goodness, she will be retiring from her the end of Sept. In the meantime, I'm stuck trying to keep us safe. She has said she doesn't care if I delete the spam/junk, and how I do it, just as long as the "good stuff" comes through to her inbox. So, I am at a loss because I just can't really get any help, or support. We've already gotten reprimanded because of the lost files episode, but that was NOT my fault and I told the board members so. She just can't seem to resist opening all that junk! I mean, does she really think she's going to get her colon cleansed via the 'Net? And why does she think she needs to be "bigger and harder" when she doesn't even have that *equipment*??? Argh!

[tomdkat]

Being the tech support person, do you have access to your employer's computer? If so, there are two things you can possibly do on their machine:

1. Enable the "leave messages on the server" option, which will prolong your access to e-mail spooled on the server
2. Install a good spam filter on the machine in question and that should filter the colon cleansing e-mail from the inbox, at least.

Other companies have their own mail servers so they have greater flexibility over what a third party hosting service might be willing to do. Some install thirdparty spam blocking tools to keep spam at bay.

SpamAssassin is good but not perfect and needs to be kept up to date.

Peace...

[Sequal7]

The obvious answer is to set up filters on your web domain. What email server do they use?
You could also set it up on the computer, I assume the employee has outlook installed?

If you want to tighten outlook, you can set the spam filter, do you use outlook 2003? It has a pretty good filter already, you just need to activate it. Here is a good tutorial on 2003 and 2000;
http://www.sitedeveloper.ws/tutorials/spam.htm

Also, you should have a screen saver timeout with login after 20minutes enabled. This will kick her off line and her mail client as well, this way she can not leave her computer logged in.
You can set that in gpedit on the computer.
Since you are the tech person, you should suggest a log off session for computers within your office (say 20 minutes) and require a password for "on resume". This may get alot of rumbling since most dont like to have to type a password on resuming, but it helps.

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by Sequal7

The obvious answer is to set up filters on your web domain. What email server do they use?

It looks like the web host tech support mentioned the same thing:

Originally Posted by TanBrae

I have asked our host about re-routing her emails so I can better filter them, but never get an answer - they just tell me to use the filter system (works a lot like OE's filtering) and their SpamAssassin, which I can't understand. Their directions for that are in some language that is foreign to me! LOL I know there has to be a way to do this because don't most of the large corporations apply some sort of re-routing for security for their emails? I am having a difficult time keeping up with deleting all her junk because she opens it, and sometimes replies to it!

Maybe adjusting the SpamAssassin detection threshold is all that is needed.

EDIT: In addition to the additional spam filtering Sequal7 mentions above.

Peace...