Get to Know SpamFoo

SpamFoo stops spam and sorts the rest of your email so the important messages are easy to find. This page explains the main ideas and where to go next.

What SpamFoo Does

SpamFoo looks at each new message and makes two decisions:

  • Is it spam? Spam and phishing are kept out of your inbox. Phishing is a fake message that tries to trick you into giving up a password, money, or personal details.
  • What kind of mail is it? Mail that isn't spam gets one of four Email Classifications: Primary, Transactions, Updates, or Promotions. SpamFoo looks at each message on its own, so mail from the same company can land in different classifications. See The Four Email Classifications.

To make these decisions, SpamFoo looks at many parts of a message, such as who sent it, whether the sender proved who they are, the links inside it, and what the message says. See How SpamFoo Classifies Email for the steps.

The SpamFoo Client

SpamFoo Client is the program that does the work. Its program and service are named spamfoo-client. It usually runs on the same server as your mail server, but it can also run on a separate server.

  • Checks mail on your server. SpamFoo Client downloads its models to your server and uses them to check each message there. This is faster than sending mail to an online service, and the message doesn't leave your server to be checked. Rules and learned preferences are stored on your server too.
  • Uses the CPU. No graphics card is needed. Servers with a supported NVIDIA graphics card can turn on GPU acceleration.
  • Includes a dashboard. The SpamFoo Dashboard is a web page where you can see how your mail was handled and correct mistakes. What you can do there depends on whether you're a user, a domain administrator, or a system administrator. See Open Your Dashboard.

Key Ideas

  • Spam Rules: Simple instructions such as "mail from this sender is always spam" or "never spam". System administrators, domain administrators, and users can each set their own.
  • Corrections: When you mark a message as spam or not spam, or move it to a different classification, SpamFoo learns from it. See How Corrections Are Used.
  • Personalization: SpamFoo remembers each user's corrections and uses them for that user's future mail. See How Personalization Works.
  • Anti-Phishing: SpamFoo checks for known phishing links and lookalike domain names. With a SpamFoo Anti-Phishing license, it also catches fake senders that pretend to be people in your organization, and the Anti-Phishing model reads each message to catch phishing and scams. See Protect Against Phishing.
  • Privacy: Message text stays on your server. Corrections are reported to SpamFoo as mathematical data that can't be turned back into the original text, unless an administrator or the owner of the mailbox chooses to share a sanitized copy. In a sanitized copy, known personal details are replaced with placeholders. See How Corrections Are Used.

Where to Go Next

Pick the description that fits you best.

You Use SpamFoo for Your Email

This includes domain administrators who manage mail for one domain.

You Run the Mail Server

If you use SmarterMail, start with the SmarterMail Overview.

You Are Connecting Your Own Software

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