Email Protection Service Message Center

Quick Start

Welcome to the Email Protection Service

Use this document to get started. This Quick Start provides an overview of how your email protection service works, as well as information on logging in to your Message Center, an overview of what you can do there, and tips for using Message Center.

See the online help for details. For specific details on using particular settings or controls, log in to your Message Center and click the Help button next to the control, or at the top right of the page.

What Is Message Center?

To prevent unwanted messages from reaching your email inbox, your email protection service filters all incoming email for junk and virus-infected messages, before they reach your inbox. Legitimate messages are delivered to your inbox as usual, but unwanted and potentially harmful messages are diverted and quarantined at your Message Center.

Message Center is located at the email protection service’s secure data center. You can visit Message Center to review and retrieve quarantined messages by logging in from any standard Web browser.

HOW MESSAGE CENTER WORKS

1. Incoming email is filtered for junk email and viruses.

2. Only legitimate messages reach your Inbox.

3. Suspicious or infected messages are quarantined at Message Center.

4. You can log in from your browser to review them.

Logging In to Message Center

After your administrator creates a Message Center account for you, you’ll receive a Welcome email message, announcing your new email protection service. This message also includes your email address and password, which you’ll need to log in to Message Center.

1. In any Web browser, go to http://login.postini.com.

Place a bookmark to this location in your Web browser. Or click the link to Message Center in your Quarantine Summary email notification (see below).

2. Log in using your email address and the password (You'll be prompted to change this password the first time you log in.)

If you didn't receive a new password in your Welcome message, use the same password as for your current email account.

If you forget your password, simply type any characters in the Password box and click the Log In button. The Forgot Your Password? link will appear on the page. Click the link to reset your password.

What Should I Do First?

When you first log in to your Message Center, you arrive at the Junk tab. This lists all messages that were recently identified as junk email and therefore quarantined at Message Center, instead of being delivered to your inbox.

Review Quarantined Junk Email

When Message Center first begins to quarantine your suspicious messages, review messages on your Junk tab for a few days to be sure valid messages aren't falsely quarantined. Click a message’s Subject to safely view its contents. If you find a valid message you want to retrieve, click its corresponding Deliver button to deliver it to your inbox.

Tip: If you deliver a message from the Junk tab, Message Center asks you whether you want to add the sender to your Approved Senders list. Messages from senders on this list bypass the junk filters, so they won’t be falsely quarantined in the future. If you open a message to view its contents, and then deliver it, you won’t be prompted to add the sender to your Approved Senders list. However, you can add the sender to your list at any time (see below).

All messages that you don’t deliver are automatically moved to the Trash after 14 days. Messages remain in the Trash for another three days before Message Center permanently deletes them.

Explore Your Personal Settings

Click the Settings link at the top right of any page to see what personal preferences are available.

What Else Can I Do Here?

Depending on privileges granted with your particular service, you might also be able to:

• R

  If your service doesn’t include privileges to perform a task listed here, contact your administrator to perform the task for you.

  eview a list of recently quarantined virus-infected messages.

• Adjust filter sensitivities to determine how aggressively to filter your email for junk email.

• Maintain allowed and blocked sender lists for individual senders, domains, and mail lists.

• Add personal email aliases (additional addresses where you also receive email) so that messages sent to these addresses are also filtered for spam and viruses.

• Choose a language for displaying Message Center, and a time zone for time-stamping messages you receive.

• Change your password for logging in to Message Center.

The Quarantine Summary Email Message

As a convenience, your administrator might email you a daily notification listing all messages that have been recently quarantined at Message Center. This notification allows you to quickly scan quarantined messages without having to visit your Message Center.

The Quarantine Summary email message also provides a link to Message Center if you do want to visit it, for example, to see the contents of a quarantined junk message.

Depending on the privileges granted with your service, you might be able to:

• Deliver messages from your Junk quarantine to your inbox (click the corresponding Deliver link in the email).

• Click a message's Subject link to log in to Message Center and review the message's content before delivering it.

• View a list of recently quarantined virus-infected messages (not shown in the image above).

Note that you don’t have to visit Message Center when you receive your Quarantine Summary. If you don’t want to review your junk email or deliver any quarantined messages to your inbox, just leave them alone and Message Center will automatically delete them from your quarantine after 14 days.

Tips for Using Message Center

When to Visit Message Center

If you are just beginning to use the email protection service, or if your junk email filters were recently adjusted, check your Junk Quarantine daily to be sure valid messages aren't being falsely quarantined. You’ll also receive regular reminders to check your Message Center and review quarantined email. Remember that Message Center will hold your quarantined email for 14 days. Messages are then automatically moved to the Trash, where they remain for three more days until they’re permanently deleted.

If You Receive Too Much Junk Email

Your email protection service blocks 95% of unwanted email. If more unwanted email than that is getting through,

For details on using junk email filters, email aliases, and sender lists:

If Valid Messages Are Quarantined

If too many valid messages are quarantined as junk email:

• Adjust your junk email filters to a more lenient setting.

• If you have any email aliases (alternate email addresses), make sure they are added to the email protection service. Contact your administrator to add them.

• Add senders whose messages are regularly getting blocked to your Approved Senders list.

When to Use Sender Lists

Depending on your privileges, Message Center might provide sender lists for allowing or blocking messages from individual senders, mail lists, or entire domains. You don't normally need to add addresses to these lists, as your junk email filters are highly accurate without them. However, there are a few cases when sender lists are useful.

• Add senders to your Approved Senders list if messages from the sender resemble junk email and have been falsely quarantined.

• If you belong to a mail list or newsgroup where different members email each other using the same TO address, you can put that TO address on your Approved Mail List.

Warning: If you set up any of your other email addresses to forward email to your account, make sure these addresses are not on your Approved Senders list. If such an address is on the list, any junk email sent to the address will bypass junk filters and reach your inbox!