Configuring sender filtering

 

Applies to: Forefront Protection for Exchange

Sender filtering can be used to block e-mail sent from specified addresses and domains and block messages that have empty sender address fields. Specific senders can also be added to the Allowed Senders and Allowed Sender Domains list to allow e-mail from those senders and domains to by-pass spam filtering.

FPE detects and blocks e-mail from sender addresses or domains listed in the Sender Block List and the Sender Domain Block List, and no further resources are used to scan the messages.

Messages with an empty sender address field are also automatically blocked.

Before you begin configuring the sender filtering settings, you need to enable sender filtering.

To enable sender filtering

  1. In the Policy Management view of the FPE Administrator Console, in the tree, expand Antispam, and then click Configure.

  2. In the Antispam - Configure pane, in the Sender filter section, select the Enable sender filtering check box

Once you have enabled Sender Filtering, you can specify blocked senders and sender exceptions.

To block mail from a certain address

  1. In the Policy Management view of the FPE Administrator Console, in the tree, expand Antispam, and then click Configure.

  2. In the Antispam - Configure pane, in the Sender filter section, click the Configure Sender Lists button.

  3. In the Configure Sender Lists dialog box, perform the following steps:

    1. Select Blocked Senders in the menu bar.

    2. In the E-mail Address box, enter the e-mail address that you want to add, for example, user@contoso.com. You must add each address individually.

    3. Click Apply to save your changes and enter additional e-mail addresses or click Apply and Close to save your entry and return to the Antispam - Configure pane. The e-mail address is added to the Blocked Sender list.

  4. Click Save at the top of the pane to save your configuration.

Note

You can also use the Configure Sender Block List option in the Actions pane of the FPE Administrator Console to configure these options.

To block mail from a specified domain

  1. In the Policy Management view of the FPE Administrator Console, in the tree, expand Antispam, and then click Configure.

  2. In the Antispam - Configure pane, in the Sender filter section, click the Configure Sender Lists button.

  3. In the Configure Sender Lists dialog box, perform the following steps:

    1. Select Blocked Domains in the menu bar.

    2. In the Domain Name box, enter the domain name that you want to add, for example, contoso.com. You must add each domain individually.

    3. Click Apply to save your changes and enter additional e-mail addresses or click Apply and Close to save your entry and return to the Antispam - Configure pane. The e-mail address is added to the Blocked Sender list.

    If you want to include sub-domains in the filter, select the Include subdomains check box.

    Note

    In order to import the domains from an external text file, that file must be in a specific format. Each domain must be on a separate line. The domain name is followed by a tab, which is followed by the word "true" or "false", indicating whether sub-domains should also be blocked (true) or not (false). For more information about importing items into a list, see Importing items into a list.

Note

You can also use the Configure Sender Block List option in the Actions pane of the FPE Administrator Console to configure these options.

To block messages with empty sender addresses

  1. In the Policy Management view of the FPE Administrator Console, in the tree, expand Antispam, and then click Configure.

  2. In the Antispam - Configure pane, in the Sender Filter section, select the Block messages with empty sender address check box and click Save at the top of the pane.

Allowing e-mail from specific senders and sender domains to by-pass spam filtering

To add e-mail addresses to the Allowed Senders List

  1. In the Policy Management view of the FPE Administrator Console, in the tree, expand Antispam, and then click Configure.

  2. In the Actions pane, select Configure Content Allow Lists.

  3. In the Configure Content Allow Lists dialog box, perform the following steps:

    1. Select Allowed Senders in the menu bar.

    2. In the E-mail Address box, enter the e-mail address that you want to add, for example, user@contoso.com. You must add each e-mail address individually.

    3. Click Apply to save your changes and enter additional e-mail addresses or click Apply and Close to save your entry and return to the Antispam - Configure pane. The e-mail address is added to the allowed senders list.

  4. Click Save at the top of the pane to save your configuration.

To add e-mail addresses to the Allowed Sender Domians List

  1. In the Policy Management view of the FPE Administrator Console, in the tree, expand Antispam, and then click Configure.

  2. In the Actions pane, select Configure Content Allow Lists.

  3. In the Configure Content Allow Lists dialog box, perform the following steps:

    1. Select Allowed Sender Domains in the menu bar.

    2. In the Domain Name box, enter the domain names that you want to add, for example, contoso.com. You must add each entry individually.

    3. Click Apply to save your changes and enter additional domain names or click Apply and Close to save your entry and return to the Antispam - Configure pane. The domain name is added to the allowed sender domains list.

  4. Click Save at the top of the pane to save your configuration.

The address is added to the allowed sender domains list. You can repeat this step in order to add more domain names.

Note   You can edit items in the lists by double-clicking and editing an item, and then pressing ENTER. You can delete items from the lists by selecting an item and clicking Remove. You can also import and export items from a list. For more information, see Importing items into a list and Exporting items from a list.