Method to process Content Filters before redirect?

[centralusa]

I realize currently that processing of any content filters does not take place before a user redirect action. The problem this causes is that ALL email regardless of spam flag or other status is redirected to the redirect email on a users account (if enabled). As a result we are having issues where we are being blocked now by external mail servers as we are viewed as propagating spam that originates from somewhere else. Obviously it would be greatly helpful if all content filtering took place before the redirect so that spam could be filtered and not sent in the redirect action. Has anyone figured out a reliable way to achieve this?

[Code Crafters]

Conent filtering does take place before user redirections. The processing order for the ones you've mentioned is SPAM filtering, content filtering, user redirections.

Make sure you have SMTP authentication enabled to prevent being and open relay and getting blocked due to unauthorised relaying of SPAM via your mail server.

Content fitlering is very powerful but can also be difficult to set up correctly for comlex rules. If you want, you can send me your smtp.ini (SPAM filtering), content filtering.ini and any related user configuration files to chris@code-crafters.com with a more detailed explanation of what you expect these settings to be doing and I'll have a look for any problems with the setup and how to improve it.

[centralusa]

Hi Chris,
We are not really having any major blocking issues from any ISP's due to an open relay or any such problem. Our specific issue is that it seems as soon as you set a redirect for a user then all messages sent to that user in AMS will be redirected to the redirect address regardless of any spam or content filtering rules. I had asked this question before and got the following response from Rob.

"User redirections do indeed take precedence and are intended simply for the user to redirect all mail content to an external account. "

Thus I was sending out a general request to see if anyone had come up with a "workaround". If you however say the above is not correct I would love to send you our config files to get guidance on how to modify this behavior.

Thanks so much

[Code Crafters]

Rob is right but let me clarify this in more detail which should make it more easily understandable.

1) SPAM filtering is done first. You can choose here to either reject email outright (delete the mail) if the SPAM filter triggers, or just set the SPAM flag / custom events (recommended) which has no immediate action itself but allows content filtering to take further action since it can do almost anything to the mails content and mail delivery.

2) Content filtering should then be used to detect the SPAM flag / custom events and act on this. Use the SPAM Identifier preset content filter rule as an example of how to detect the SPAM flag / custom events and modify the subject to pre-pend <SPAM> to it just for identification. You can use other actions such as Delete Email which will again delete the email there and then and no furhter mail delivery will be considered. You can also choose to move the mail to an account directory (e.g. Junk E-mail) or send a copy to another user (e.g. admin) and much more.

3) Finally, at the user filtering / redirection area, if you redirect the mail to an external email address not on the mail server, the mail obviously won't be moved to another account directory as this is an internal flag that only our mail server recognises that is lost upon leaving the mail server. However, if you redirect to another local email address on the mail server as far as I'm pretty confident that the content filtering actions should all still apply (e.g move to folder). There are also user filters, and redirections completely skip these since the mail is no longer intended for delivery at that user and this is what Rob will have been indicating. You can also choose to still deliver to the local user as well as redirect to others and the mail delivery for the local original user will still have all user (and content) filtering applied to it.

So in summary, SPAM and content filtering are done before user delivery / redirection but user redirections will skip the user filters since that user is no longer the account being delivered to. Content filtering will always be done apart from some actions which can't be done when the mail leaves the mail server (non local delivery).

[centralusa]

This makes 100% sense and how I understood the system to function. I guess my request was has anyone come up with a way to "have the best of both worlds". Ultimately it would be nice to have an option in AMS to "Not redirect mail flagged as spam", in other words only mail flagged for delivery to a local users inbox would (if this setting was enabled) be redirected (to an internal or external address). It would seem this could be achieved by not using a redirect and instead setting up some kind of folder action to take place as soon as a message hit a users inbox (the action could then trigger a redirect of this message).

Thanks for the feedback and clarification

[Code Crafters]

If you want to redirect only based on certain conditions like marked as SPAM this can be achieved by using content filtering to redirect the mail based on conditions rather than using the more basic user redirection. We also plan to add more detailed filtering like with content filtering at the user filtering level in a future update.