New IMF Tune Pre-processing Engine

The next IMF Tune update is progressing well and we would like to share some details on what we are working on.

So far IMF Tune mostly allowed for configuring static filtering rules. For example, an Administrator identifies a phrase commonly used in spam and creates a rule for raising the spam rating of emails matching that phrase. Rules may contain a combination of conditions and exceptions allowing fine-grained filtering. However, even so, the rules are static in nature.

The next IMF Tune update will bring a new email pre-processing component, allowing for more dynamic filtering rules. Pre-processing extracts information from incoming emails and feeds it back into the filtering rule logic. For example, for each email we can extract the recipient address alias and look for it within the subject and body. Consider one commonly used email address schema:
name.surname@domain.com

How often have you seen spam starting with "Dear name.surname"? Quite obviously the sender is trying to guess the recipient name. Such emails are ripe for filtering. This is what pre-processing allows us to do.

For the moment we are surfacing this functionality by adding 4 new Advanced SCL Rule conditions of type:

• Recipient email alias is in subject
• Recipient email alias is in body
• Total digits in sender address is within range
• Is NULL sender

Inserting this functionality in the Advanced Rules interface gives us a lot of flexibility. We can combine them with other conditions or employ them as exceptions. Furthermore we can apply any type of SCL change, whether to outright blacklist the email or to just raise the spam rating.

Beyond these four filtering conditions, we can do a lot more and we want to hear from you! Let us know what other information you are missing and would like to have for building smarter filtering rules.

The next IMF Tune update is planned for release in May. Be the first to know when this update is available by following us on Facebook or Twitter.