Anti-Virus and Anti-Spam Quarantine

The Hood County News (HCN) Internet Service provides virus and Spam checking of all e-mail accounts.

Anti-Virus
If a virus is detected in a message sent to or from an HCN Internet Service subscriber, the message is deleted. An alert from the postmaster@hcnews.com will be sent to the sender and the intended recipient.

Anti-Spam
If a message is suspected of being unsolicited (Spam), the e-mail is placed into a quarantine folder on the HCN mailserver. These messages are stored for 3 days on the server. After the 3 days, they are deleted.

Each morning, a message is sent to all users showing the emails that have been placed into the quarantine folder. Messages may be released directly from this email by clicking on "Click Here" under the Release column of the email. A sample Spam Report email is located here.

No action is required on your part if the mail is in fact Spam. The messages will be deleted automatically from the server and will never appear in your inbox.

Whitelist
When a message is released from Quarantine, you will be given the option of adding the sender to your "whitelist." The whitelist is a list of senders from whom you always want to receive mail. Once added to your whitelist, the sender will not be blocked for spam and will automatically go to your inbox. To add the sender to your whitelist, click on the underlined link in the window showing the message has been released from quarantine.

Deleting Spam and Blacklist
All the messages in your spam report may be deleted by clicking on the delete all link at the bottom of the page. Individual senders may also be added to a "blacklist" which marks the sender as always being a spam sender. When a message is deleted  from Quarantine, you will be given the option of adding the sender to your  blacklist. To add the sender to your blacklist, click on the underlined link in the window showing the message has been deleted from quarantine.

No action is required on your part if the mail is in fact Spam. The messages will be deleted automatically from the server and will never appear in your inbox.

Webmail and Quarantine
Quarantined messages may also be seen by connecting to the HCN Interent Service webmail system at  webmail.hcnews.net.

After successfully logging in with username and password, users are presented with a list of all e-mail in their mailbox.

To see messages that have been placed in the quarantine folder, click on the quarantine link on the left sidebar You will then see a list of quarantined messages. Messages may be deleted or released to be moved into the user's inbox. Once the messages are moved into the inbox, they can be read using webmail or downloaded with the user's normal e-mail client software (Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape Communicator, etc.)

Releasing Messages
Select the message that you want to release by putting a check in the box to the left of the message. Once all of the good messages are checked, click on Release from the Select Action menu. To view more messages, click on next. To go back to the previous list, click on Prev.

If you find an e-mail that has been mistakenly caught in your Quarantine folder then open the e-mail. Once in there you have the option to add that sender to your Trusted Sender's list, or the Whitelist.

No action is required on your part if the mail is in fact Spam. The messages will be deleted automatically from the server and will never appear in your inbox.

Deleting Messages (Optional)
Select the message that you want to delete by putting a check in the box to the left of the message. Once all of the bad (Spam) messages are checked, click on Delete & Purge link. To view more messages, click on next. To go back to the previous list, click on Prev.

If you want to delete all of the messages on the list, you can click in the box on the heading (to the left of the paperclip icon). This will put a check in all of the messages. Click on Delete & Purge to delete them.

Individual Settings
Settings may be changed on a mailbox basis by clicking on the Settings tab at the top of the page. More information about changing settings is available here.