Barracuda Spam Filter Basics
This guide will go over the basics of the Barracuda Spam Firewall service. If you are interested in activating this premium spam filtering service, Barracuda Spam Firewall accounts can be purchased at our Account Upgrades page.
How It Works
The Barracuda Spam Firewall acts as an intermediary between a sender and a recipient. Your MX record is configured so that all mail destined for your domain is first sent to the Barracuda Spam Firewall. The Barracuda Spam Firewall intercepts all mail destined for your domain and performs 12 layers of spam filtering on the message. Depending on the results of the spam filtering, the message may either be allowed through, blocked outright, or placed in quarantine for your review. This all happens transparently with no user intervention. At the end of the day, a quarantine report is sent out by the service if you have any emails waiting to be reviewed.
The Barracuda service operates on a per-domain basis, it is active for an entire domain rather than individual email accounts. When you add a new email account in cPanel, there is no need to reconfigure the Barracuda device.
The Barracuda service gives every email a score from 1 to 10 indicating the likelihood of it being spam. Based on this score, the Barracuda Spam Firewall will allow, block, or quarantine the email. The thresholds for these three actions is configurable on a per-email account basis. You have complete control over how the Barracuda appliance behaves after it's scored your email.
The Barracuda Quarantine
Based on your scoring rules, the Barracuda appliance will quarantine emails which aren't immediately identified as spam but may not necessarily be recognized as a legitimate email either. These emails aren't delivered, but are held in Quarantine on the Barracuda appliance for your review. At the end of each day, the Barracuda appliance will send out Quarantine Reports for any accounts which have an email in quarantine.
If you wish to check your quarantine at anytime or adjust your spam settings, you can login to your Barracuda management area directly:
Input the email address you wish to check as the username. If you do not know your password, you must then click 'Create New Password'. A Barracuda password will be sent to the email account you've provided. Log into Barracuda using that email address and corresponding password.
The following guide shows an example of using the Barracuda Quarantine:
Barracuda Quarantine Management
Disabling the Barracuda Quarantine
Some users opt to disable the Barracuda Quarantine altogether. You can opt to have Barracuda forward normally quarantined emails to your inbox with a prefix of [QUARANTINE] added to the subject line. To enable this, go to the 'Quarantine' section of the 'Preferences' tab, and select 'No' for the 'Enable Quarantine' options.
Whitelist and Blacklist
Want to ALWAYS block or ALWAYS allow email from certain domains?
You can do so by using the Preferences -> Whitelist/Blacklist section of your Barracuda management area. If you want to ALWAYS block emails from a certain accounts, add the address into the Blacklist. If you want to ALWAYS allow emails from certain accounts, add the address into the whitelist.
For a demo on managing your Whitelist and Blacklist, please see:
Blacklist and Whitelist Management
Changing your Barracuda Account password
You can change your password by going to the "Password" section of the Preferences tab. Simply enter your old password for confirmation into the top text box, and your new password twice, once in each of the remaining text boxes. When you are ready, click 'Save Password'.
For a demo on changing your Barracuda Account password, please see: