IBM Lotus Notes Hints, Tips, and Tricks

Domino SPAM Resource Guide

Last updated: February 26th, 2006

IBM Redbook - Lotus Domino 6 spam Survival Guide

Controlling spam: Advanced SMTP settings in Lotus Domino - part1 - developerWorks article

Controlling spam: Advanced SMTP settings in Lotus Domino - part2 - developerWorks article

Preventing SPAM mail in Notes/Domino 6 - developerWorks article

Tutorial: Managing inbound spam in Lotus Domino 6: covers many techniques available to Domino administrators to battle spam mail, including:

• Making sure your mail server isn't used by spammers to relay spam mail
• Using third party maintained DNS blacklists that can filter out spam
• Using several techniques to verify various aspects of mail in an attempt to identify and filter out spam
• Using mail rules and other types of restrictions to combat spam

Chris Linfoot's - The IBM/Lotus Notes/Domino spam bible.  Including, Enhanced Mail Rules which provide the ability to create server mail rules that act on additional information to be found in the MIME headers of inbound messages.

Fighting SPAM in Lotus Domino (from DominoZone)

Hacking Domino mail rules to fight spam (from DominoPower)

Interview with Mark Ramos about SPAM (Lotus Advisor)

List of All Known DNS-based Spam Databases

Quick Guide to Notes/Domino Mail Control Features

Server Level Control Of Mail (this is just an overview, the Redbook covers this topic in much greater detail)

1. DNS Blacklist (DNSBL) Filters:

• Enforcement options: Log only, Log and tag message, Log and reject message
• Custom error response for rejected messages

2. Server Mail Rules:

• Conditions: Sender, Subject, Body, Importance, Delivery Priority, To, CC, BCC, To or CC, Body or Subject, Internet domain, Size, All documents, Attachment name, Number of attachments, Form, Recipient count, Any recipient
• Actions: Journal this message, Move to database, Don't accept message, Don't deliver message, Silently delete and Send Non Delivery Report, Change routing state to mark as held

3. Inbound Connection Controls: DNS lookup to verify host name in DNS and Specify IP address/host name of servers to be allowed/denied connections

4. Inbound Sender Controls: Specify how SMTP server will process connection based on senders address.   Domino attempts to verify address in DNS (or in MX record).   Admin can specify addresses / domains allowed or denied

5. Inbound Relay Controls: Controls which servers can use this as relay.   Allow/deny the names of hosts that Domino will relay mail TO/FOR

6. Inbound Relay Enforcement: Refinement to determine whether relay checking is performed for all hosts, external hosts, or disabled.   You can exclude specific exceptions to your anti-relay checks.   Also you can set exceptions to specify whether users who login are exempt from enforcement of relay controls.

7. Intended Recipient Controls

8. Local Internet domain recipient validation: Performs real-time lookup against configured Domino directories to verify existence of local recipient

9. Disabling Routing SMTP Mail to Groups

Client Side Control Of Mail

1. Client Mail File Rules:  (*and QuickRules)

• Conditions: Sender, Subject, Body, Importance, Delivery Priority
• Actions: Move to folder, Copy to folder, Send copy to, Set expiration date, Change importance to, Delete

2. Block mail from sender

3. Block mail from domain