Recovering Infected Email From Quarantine
The Quarantine Folder
Typically, when an email is discovered to contain spam content or it houses a virus it will be placed in quarantine. This prevents the virus from delivering its payload and stops spam from clogging up your email client or your email server. Unfortunately, some email that is quarantined may turn out to be genuine and may need recovering to your usual client or back to the mail server so that it can be read online. Anti spam and other security software should include the capability to do just that quickly and easily.
The Real Problem With Spam Email
While you may only consider spam to be little more than a minor inconvenience, for business users and even individual users it can cause major problems. IT systems and email servers, in particular, can become crippled if there is a particularly high instance of spam email flooding through. Preventing this is essential. Spam emails also carry other problems. Many contain scams or may be phishing emails rather than spam. These are used in attempt to extort money or personal details from recipients. Inexperienced email and Internet users that are unaware of this phenomenon can be prone to clicking links and divulging information or parting with money for illegitimate or just plain fraudulent offers. Care should always be taken when removing any email considered spam from quarantine.
Retrieving Quarantined Email
The dashboard or user interface of your anti spam software should contain a link to the quarantine folder. This link will take you to the folder that contains all “deleted” emails. Most applications will retain quarantined email for a set period of time, and these settings can usually be altered by the user to match their preferences. Some applications will use a default of seven days, while others will offer a more extensive 31 days. If you locate the email in the quarantine folder within the appropriate period, according to your software settings, you will be able to effectively recover it.
In the quarantine folder of your anti spam software there should be a button or option to recover the email. Highlight the email or emails that you wish to allow through to your Inbox and select this option. The emails will then be recovered and forwarded to your mail client in the normal way enabling you to view, store, and work with the email as you would work with any other.
Quarantine Settings
You should always ensure that the quarantine settings are adequate for your requirements. Setting the software to delete quarantined emails in too short a period of time may mean that you miss out on recovering genuine emails. On the other hand, keeping them for too long, can quickly clog up your system and potentially cause the scanning process to become slower and more cumbersome.
To Quarantine Or To Delete
Another important factor to consider is that when you first use anti spam software you are likely to be given the option of whether you wish to quarantine infected email or completely delete it. Some software will continue to provide you with this option until you click the box that states “do not ask this question again” or “perform the same action with all emails of this type”. Again, care should be taken. Permanently deleting an infected email will at least make it much more difficult to recover and may after some time become completely irretrievable.
Spam And Anti Spam Software
Spam is a major problem for a lot of people. Businesses can suffer from a near crippled IT infrastructure while email accounts can become unserviceable because of the sheer weight of emails received. Anti spam software can help to prevent this onslaught of unnecessary and frankly annoying email from ever reaching your inbox. Almost all software uses a quarantine folder to temporarily store infected emails so that they can be restored or removed at a later date.