Our company uses a set of email filters to help block the delivery of unsolicited commercial and junk email, otherwise known as SPAM. If you have been directed to this page, it is because our anti-SPAM server has rejected your email message.
If you believe that your email was rejected in error, please accept our sincere apologies. We would like to add you to our "whitelist" of approved senders. Once your email address has been added to this whitelist, all of your messages will automatically bypass our anti-spam filters. To be added to this list, please do one of the following:
- Send an email message to noc@ias.net. Please include the name or email address of the person you were trying to reach. After verifying that they wish to receive email from you, we will add you to our whitelist and notify you via email so that you may resend your message.
- OR Call our Technical Services at (800) 217-7091 and let them know that you would like to be added to our whitelist. They will need to know your exact email address and the name or email address of the person you were trying to reach. After verifying that the they wish to receive email from you, we will add you to our whitelist and notify you by email so that you may resend your message.
No matter which option you select, verification is handled manually by one of our IT staff and is done during business hours (M-F 9-5 EST). If your email is urgent, please contact your attorney directly by phone.
More Information
- Once I'm added to the whitelist do I need to resend my original message?
- Yes. Unfortunately our anti-spam software does not keep any copies of rejected email. Once you have been added to our whitelist, the system will automatically accept all new email from your address. However you will need to resend your original message.
- I send email to several people at DOMAIN.COM. Do I need to tell you all their names?
- No. Once you have been added to our whitelist, the approval is firm-wide. You may then send email to anyone at domain.com and the system will automatically approve your message.
- I don't send SPAM. Why was my message rejected?
- As you can imagine, distinguishing between real and junk email
has become an increasingly difficult process. Our filter uses a scoring
system
to describe certain attibutes of an email message. Attributes that
are consistant with SPAM score positive points, and attributes that
are consistant with non-SPAM score negative points. Here
is a quick list of some of the tests we ran against your email message:
- SpamAssassin General Rules: your message was compared against the SpamAssassin rulebase. This rulebase detects common spam tactics like offering to remove you from their list, trying to sell various pharmaceuticals, or advertising access to pornographic sites.
- SpamAssassin Blacklist Checks: when your ISP's mail server contacted our server, it's IP address was compared against various blacklists (SORBS, NJABL, Spamcop, DSBL, and others). Unfortunately many ISPs (like TimeWarner and BellSouth) misconfigure their mail servers in such a way that spammers can use these servers to hide their location. If your ISP has misconfigured email servers, then this may have contributed to the message rejection. See any of the listed sites for more info.
- SpamAssassin Bayes Checks: the words that you used in your message were compared, using Bayesian analysis, against the words of other non-spam messages we have received in the past. This system adapts itself to our law firm, so for example, an email with pornographic words would receive positive spam points while a corporate document would receive negative spam points.
- Razor Database Check: a checksum of your message was compared with the online Razor database of actual spam messages.
- DCC Database Check: a checksum of your message was compared with the online Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse database of actual spam messages.
- I didn't send a message to DOMAIN.COM, but I still got a rejection. Why?
- Unfortunately a common tactic of both spammers and viruses is to forge
the FROM part of an email address. This helps them hide their location
and makes it difficult for companies to identify and block them. Here's
a scenario to help explain this:
A spammer uses a misconfigured BellSouth mail server to send an email to the RBH mail server. In the mail message, the spammer has forged your email address, to make it look as if you were the author of the email. After running the tests, the RBH server refuses to accept the message. The BellSouth server mistakenly assumes that the author (you) would want to know about this, so it sends you an email letting you know that it could not be delivered. Although the bounce message includes a line directing you to this site, the DOMAIN.COM server did not send you this email. Instead, it comes from the mail server that the spammer used when forging your address.
If you are a target of a spammer or virus for forging, you may receive hundreds or thousands of these bounce messages. Unfortunately, there is not much that you can do if this is happening to you. Depending on the severity, you will probably want to contact your ISP and ask for a new email address. - What SPAM filter do you use and can I use it?
- The anti-SPAM system that we use is not suitable for most home users. However the software is entirely Open Source and freely available. As a courtesy, here is a fully detailed document describing how to implement this anti-spam filter for your company. The document is updated frequently and is available here: Fairly-Secure Anti-SPAM Gateway Using OpenBSD, Postfix, Amavisd-new, SpamAssassin, Razor and DCC.