POP3 Junk Mail

kadybee

Gruesse

I have this problem where some users are using POP3 only for their mail and therefore don’t pickup messages that have been filtered to the Junk Folder.
To work around this, I have adjusted their individual SPAM settings to increase the ‘Move to Junk’ to the ‘Reject’ score level.
Is there perhaps another option to not move email to Junk on a user or domain basis?

Thanks.

ETNyx

Hello,

1) They can use SoGo
2) Migrate them to IMAP
3) Enable spam and quarantine notification for them, this way report land in inbox, they can force delivery of message to inbox from spam
4) Per user bump rspamd score for quarantine and force user to get some antispam solution for it’s clients,..

kadybee

Thanks ETNyx. Yes I know I can manage spam settings per user and that is what I am doing at the moment. I was looking for a full domain-wide workaround/solution.

BTW, there are good, valid reasons for POP instead of IMAP:
With the proliferation of successful phishing scams etc that get hackers access to mailboxes - let alone server security issues - it is better to have sensitive information downloaded and ‘air-gapped’ on local networks instead of sitting out there for world access 24/7.
I encourage medical and legal practitioners and finance and accounts managers to use POP3 because of that.
Some of those industries already have policies to ensure there is no webmail (SOGo) access to their accounts.

This week I have helped two separate organisations whose mailboxes were hacked on Microsoft 365 Servers. One of them had 35+ Gigabytes of data including company history and passwords in their account compromised.
They will now maybe pay attention when we tell them a mailbox is not a filing cabinet.

esackbauer

This thinking is somewhat strange. A user was compromised (most likely by phishing?), not the service.
And typically end user devices are less secure than a managed service. So with POP3 and downloading all mails to an end user device, you are just shifting the problem of users not aware about their risk profile to the end user device.
How is this device backed up? How do you enforce compliance standards, e.g. legal archiving duties?
It is the education and awareness of the users that brings more safety than most technical measures.

kadybee

esackbauer Yes, Agree.
We continue to preach that a mailbox/mail program is not a filing cabinet, and we teach good mailbox practices like ‘inbox zero’.
We recently dealt with the Privacy Act (Australia) and cyber insurance dealers. They demand that sensitive information in some industries not be kept on a mail server or in a mailbox - particularly medical and legal. I tend to agree with them.
Unfortunately, security of data is second to convenience for too many.
The best security of sensitive data is to not leave it ‘lying around’. Users and sysadmins are not just battling ‘script kiddies’ on their computers at night, they are battling nations these days. Difference is, one will tell you they got in to your stuff.
Email remains an attractive and prime target.
My ‘thinking’, by the way, is military/defence.

esackbauer

kadybee They demand that sensitive information in some industries not be kept on a mail server or in a mailbox - particularly medical and legal.

If so, how do you ensure legal compliance? How do you backup and archive end user devices with mails? Because as it seems your users are storing patient relevant data in mails. And for documentation and legal proof I guess its mandatory to archive such communication/data for some years. At least thats the case here in Europe, and I guess Australia is not much different.

Back to topic: I could imagine a solution in front of mailcow, which acts as spam filter and MTA (I use Sophos Firewall for this, can also do WAF and reverse proxy).
The Sophos can identify and tag spam mails (like inserting [SPAM] in the subject , and you could have a rule on your local email clients that puts them into a Spam folder locally.

kadybee

esackbauer we use email and document storage systems on servers that are well hidden and locked down to LAN. It then becomes one focus of security and backup for sensitive data.
One of the best mail storage systems, IMHO, is Mailstore Server. They also have a little known program called Mailstore Home which is perfect for Personal usage.

Yes, good ideas, thanks for the suggested workarounds.