SMTP

Use a PowerShell function to find an email address in Exchange

Exchange admins frequently need to find an Exchange recipient with a specified email address, particularly for generic organizational addresses such as [email protected]. Five and a half ways to find an email address in Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory lists a few ways to do it, including PowerShell. If you do this frequently, you can add […]

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Net neutrality and how ISPs can impact your email security

There was a time ISPs limited themselves to providing layer 3 connectivity. You got a connection, and if the link was up and your computer or network configured correctly for Internet Protocol (IP) communication, you could send and receive TCP/IP packets over that link. The ISP controlled the bandwidth, which is the maximum rate at […]

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Export and Import Content Filter Words or Phrases

In Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2007, you can add custom words or phrases as good or bad words to modify the Spam Confidence Level (SCL) assigned to messages. Messages with a good word or phrase are assigned an SCL of 0 and bypass other antispam agents that fire after the Content Filtering agent. Messages with […]

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Are Distribution Groups really being used?

Over the years, you end up creating a large number of Distribution Groups based on user demands. The regular departmental Distribution Groups such as Sales, Marketing, Engineering, and HR. The geographical ones such as AllUS, All-California, All-BayArea, and so on. The ones by employment status such as All-FTE for full-time employees, All-Contractors, and so on. […]

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EHLO: DSNConversionMode and You

If you haven’t already read Jason Nelson’s take on Delivery Service Notifications (DSNs), head over right away to DSNConversionMode and You: An Administrator’s Guide.

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Disable Antispam agents on a Receive Connector

Exchange 2007’s antispam agents are enabled for all Receive Connectors on a transport server. Is there a way to disable the agents on a particular Receive Connector? Although not as simple as turning an agent off for each IP address or Receive Connector, Exchange 2007’s new transport permissions model allows you to do this just […]

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HOW TO: Prevent annoying spam from your own domain

One of the more annoying types of spam is the one that seems to be coming from your own domain; or worse— from your own email address! Of course, users from your own domain don’t generally spam each other— unless you’re using one of the free web-based email services. And most of us don’t spam […]

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Delay Notifications: Informing users about delays in mail delivery

Users consider email to be a reliable communication mechanism – not as reliable as the dial tone, but pretty close. Most users expect mail to be delivered within minutes, if not seconds. Many organizations, including those operating in the financial & banking sectors, have strict SLAs for mail delivery which specify mail delivery times granularly— […]

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Removing internal host names and IP addresses from message headers

Another frequently asked question about SMTP mail – how can I remove internal host names and IP addresses from outbound Internet mail? More often than not, this results from the belief that somehow if the outside world finds out an organization’s internal IP addresses and host names, it makes the organization vulnerable. Auditors love to […]

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Routing outbound mail using a particular IP address

A question that frequently and inevitably pops up when discussing Exchange transport is that of being able to route outbound mail using a particular IP address. The Exchange Server 2003/2000 transport architecture was confusing for many newcomers— the difference between an SMTP Virtual Server and an SMTP Connector being the main cause of this confusion. […]

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