Postini FAQ

10th March, Wednesday

1. What is Postini?

Postini is a commercial Mail Filtering Service. It is one of the largest Mail Filtering services out there. Postini uses proprietary methods to identify SPAM and VIRUSES. POSTINI by default will quarantine any email that matches its rule sets and will store each message in its entirety for 14 days. You can read a Spam Shootout Review here.

2.Why should I care?

Because as a member of Flexnet, you are currently being mail filtered RIGHT NOW whether you know it or not. Please withold any judgements until you understand what POSTINI is doing. It does a great job. It just may be the answer to your spam woes!

3.What about Spamassassin?

Spamassassin was a great tool in the beginning of its life cycle. It was a grass roots effort that had great potential. Unfortunately, spammers have access to the source code of Spamassassin and all of its methodologies. Spammers are crafting their spam to get around software like Spamassassin. Currently, it is a lost cause to stick with Spamassassin.

We will be phasing out our Spamassassin filtering soon. Please get to know POSTINI!

4.Well, won't POSTINI end the very same way?

POSTINI is a private for-profit effort. Flexnet pays POSTINI 32cents a user. We have as of this date, 4010 paying users. You do the math. As a private effort, the way that POSTINI does its thing is proprietary but more important from an ISP's standpoint, the software that POSTINI uses is not available to Spammers! This is the key.

5.Wow, you just spring this on us like BANG! How come?

Spam was getting to the point that it interfered and adversely affected Flexnet's basic services. The latest WORM generated bogus email claiming to be from a trusted organization. In our case, it would key on our user's FLEX.COM domain, and then write email to the infected user's email account plus all other email addresses found on the infected user's computer claming to be from "The Flex.Com Team" and asking the user to do this or to do that.

This made is such that even LEGIT Flexnet email was now suspect by our users. We couldn't even communicate to you, without you thinking that it was another virus/spam! So this was an "emergency" implementation.

6.So now what? How do I control this beast?

Go to https://login.postini.com. In the "Log in Address" box, put in your email account here at Flexnet. This should be the email account that you let others contact you by. Either user@flex.com or user@shaka.com (of course, you will substitute your real username, right??)

In the password box, put in your Flexnet Password. This is legit!

7.HELP! I been to the POSTINI Site. I am confused!

Don't lie! There are lots of HELP pages at the POSTINI login site. Be calm. Open Your Mind. Expand.