CudaMail Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions that we receive. If you have any other questions that aren't addressed here, feel free to contact us.

If you are a domain manager for a domain that we are filtering, you can use the Support Form here.

Click the FAQ Category bars to open or close questions.

CudaMail Service Questions

How current are your virus and spam definitions?
Answer:
A team of security engineers at Barracuda Central continuously monitors the Internet for trends in spam and virus attacks. As they detect trends, Energize Updates are created and distributed to the CudaMail service and all Barracuda Spam Firewalls, which are automatically updated with new spam rules, spam algorithms, and virus definitions. These updates require zero administration and ensure that your network has comprehensive and accurate protection even as the methods of attack change. For the CudaMail service, the spam and virus definitions are updated hourly.
How do I know my email will remain private?
Answer:
Email is processed inside the hardware. Further privacy is configured in the Barracuda Spam Firewall interface. The administrator can specify who can access the machine and it is password protected. For more information on the privacy of the CudaMail service, please read our Service Agreement
Will I get false positives?
Answer:
The false positive rate of the Barracuda Spam Firewall and the CudaMail service is one of the lowest in the industry. For any false positives the sender will receive a bounce message indicating the email did not go through. This way, the sender has the opportunity to either re-try their email or contact you by another method.
How is SPAM Filtered?
Answer:
Incoming email is routed through the Barracuda Spam Firewall before it hits your mail server. Spam is tagged, quarantined or blocked based on preferences setup by the Domain Manager and/or end-user, depending on the level of CudaMail service. Legitimate email is allowed through to the recipient.
What happens to quarantined email?
Answer:
By default, per user quarantine mailboxes will be setup automatically by the service - the email is stored on the Barracuda Spam Firewall itself. A daily "Spam Quarantine Summary" report will be sent and each user can decide for himself/herself whether they would like to keep the quarantined messages and / or classify it as spam. A second option, instead, is that the Domain Manager can receive ALL quarantined email (sent to a single mailbox specified by the Domain Manager upon sign-up). With the exception of viruses, email messages are stored in their entirety, and can be retrieved should the need arise. From the designated quarantine mailbox the Domain Manager can determine what action to take against the quarantined emails.
Would each email address have its own quarantine mailbox?
Answer:
Yes. If you wish, each email address (including aliases) will be quarantined individually to allow controlled custom settings for the specific email address (or alias). This is setup automatically by the service and requires no additional work on behalf of the Domain Manager. However, if you do not want individual quarantined mailboxes for all users, ALL quarantined email can be sent to a single mailbox specified by the Domain Manager upon sign-up. This way, the Domain Manager is responsible for sifting through quarantined messages.
What per user preferences and settings does the service allow?
Answer:
- Personal Allow and Block Lists The CudaMail service can be configured to allow end users to have control over their individual allow and Block lists which further reduces the chance of false positives.
- End-User Quarantine The CudaMail service provides the ability to setup quarantine mailboxes where users can direct questionable email for later review. This greatly reduces the support load for large organizations.
- Quarantine Digest Emails A daily email is sent to all end users with a quarantine account summarizing the contents of their individual quarantine mailboxes. Here, each user will be able to choose if a particular email is spam or not thereby allowing the CudaMail service to adapt to the individual user's preferences.
  
  Note: End-users do not have to remember any passwords or user IDs to access their quarantine mailbox; each summary account email is an html document with direct links pointing to the end-users quarantine mailbox with the appropriate verification embedded.
Some spam is still getting to my inbox. How can I stop it?
Answer:
The nature of UCE (unsolicited commercial email) is that once a way has been found to defeat one method, another is found for use by the spammers. The only thing that we can do is try to minimize the spam that actually reaches the inbox. The complete solution toward this goal, also requires some action on the user's part.

Check to see if your mail server is blocking inbound port 25 connections from mail servers other than the CudaMail servers. Our Welcome letter strongly suggests that filtering be put in place to only allow inbound port 25 (SMTP) connections from the CudaMail servers (mx1 and mx2.cudamail.com) and our monitoring server at monitor.cudamail.com.

Any of the emails that have been identified as spam will have [CudaMail Tagged] in the subject line. If that isn't there, it's an indication that you haven't been blocking inbound connections, and spammers have bypassed the CudaMail protection.

If a spam message does happen to get through, you can forward us the X-ASG-Debug-ID of it and we can mark it in the Global Bayesian database. The ID can be found in the e-mail headers, and looks like the following example:

"X-ASG-Debug-ID: 1138982708-3218-174-0"

If the message does not have a X-ASG-Debug-ID then the message did not flow through the CudaMail service.
I need to troubleshoot some lost email. Where can I start?
Answer:
Look at the log file to see if anything has come from this domain recently. You can also do an MX lookup to get the IP address of the mail server and search for connections from this mail server's IP address.

Do you have a subject line or something else that can help track down this message?

We have seen this type of problem when two domains used to share a mail server and one migrated off. If the domain configuration and mailboxes were never deleted from the old mail server then any e-mail sent to the old mail server would be placed directly into the old mailboxes and never forwarded on to the new mail server.

We have also seen problems when a domain moves DNS servers and the records are never removed from the old DNS servers. It can cause similar problems to the one mentioned above but usually results in a bounce message.
What is the lead time to setting up an account?
Answer:
A team of security engineers at Barracuda Central continuously monitors the Internet for trends in spam and virus attacks. As they detect trends, Energize Updates are created and distributed to the CudaMail service and all Barracuda Spam Firewalls, which are automatically updated with new spam rules, spam algorithms, and virus definitions. These updates require zero administration and ensure that your network has comprehensive and accurate protection even as the methods of attack change. For the CudaMail service, the spam and virus definitions are updated hourly.
What About Encrypted Email?
Answer:
Yes, the CudaMail system supports Encrypted Email - LS (Transport Layer Security)

CudaMail Support Questions

Barracuda Spam Firewall Questions

What is Spam Scoring, Bayesian Analysis, and Email Fingerprinting?
Answer:
1. Question: What is Spam Scoring, Bayesian Analysis, and Email Fingerprinting?
  Answer:
  - Spam Scoring:
    The rules- based system (about 4000 rules) that looks for characteristics in the email. The Spam scores are used to determine what to do with the email. They do not contribute directly to the future analysis. The rules are updated via the Energize Updates Subscription.
  - Bayesian Analysis:
    Contributes to the Spam scoring. This is done using emails that you flag as either SPAM, or NOT SPAM in the message log.
  - Email Fingerprinting:
    The identification of exact or substantially similar emails via the Barracuda Central clearing house. When an email is identified as being Spam, it is also sent to our clearing house and fingerprinted.
2. Question: What is the capacity of the message logs on the appliance?
  The Barracuda Spam Firewall preserves log information for the last 500,000 messages and automatically removes old log information to maintain performance. Logs can be exported in real-time using syslog, a common tool supported by Unix systems as well as many third parties.