Filtering e-mail to prevent virus proliferation

To prevent the spread of a virus that might infiltrate the e-mail servers, you can create filters to look for a particular subject, type, file name, and originator's address in incoming e-mail. The e-mail can then be quarantined or discarded.

With virus filtering, questionable e-mails are automatically quarantined or discarded based on parameters established by the administrator. E-mails can be filtered by any or all of the following criteria:

1. Address-individuals or domains

2. Subject - ILOVEYOU

3. Attachment name - lovebug.vbs or *.vbs

4. MIME type - image/* or image/jpg

The values can contain wildcard characters. One wildcard character is an asterisk (*), which specifies that one or more arbitrary characters can be at the position of the wildcard. For example, *.vbs can be used to check for filenames with an extension of .vbs. An originator of *@us.ibm.com filters all mail from IBM in the United States, and a filter of image/* filters type image for all subtypes.

To create a filter, follow these steps:

1. In iSeries™ Navigator, expand your system > Network > Servers > TCP/IP.

2. Right-click SMTP and select Properties.

3. Select the Filters page.

4. Select Keep message or Discard message. Selecting Keep message will save a copy of the message, which will not be delivered to the recipient.

5. Click Add to specify the message criteria that identifies the potential virus. Messages matching this criteria will not be delivered to the recipient.

6. Click OK to save your changes.