Forefront FAQ
Q. What is Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE)?
A. Forefront is the Microsoft powered anti-spam hosted solution, which is replacing SF State’s current Cisco Ironport appliances. Forefront will help protect our inbound and outbound e-mail from spam, viruses, and phishing scams.
Q. What is spam Quarantine?
A: Spam Quarantine is the term used for e-mail that is rated as “very likely spam” but is presented to you for additional review. Over time, FOPE uses your response and categorization as “junk” or “not junk” to determine whether to automatically allow or block these messages in the future.
Q. Why do I see 2 folders – Junk E-Mail and Quarantine?
A. The Junk E-Mail folder contains probable spam. You should review these messages. The quarantine folder is e-mail that SF State's policies have identified as spam. Messages in the Quarantine folder can be sent back to your inbox but cannot be used to update junk message rules (submitted as "not junk").
Q. How will I receive spam quarantine notifications?
A. Every 7 days, you will receive an e-mail notification from "quarantine@messaging.microsoft.com" that details the messages that were sent to you and marked as spam. If you would like to check your spam messages more frequently, you may log in to your Forefront quarantine mailbox account at any time by going to https://quarantine.messaging.microsoft.com. Your Forefront username is your SF State e-mail address.
The first time you access your Forefront quarantine mailbox account, you will need to set a password by clicking on the Need your password? link. Enter your SF State e-mail address and click on Send. An e-mail will be sent to you containing a link to set or reset your password.
Q. If I specify something as "Not Junk" will it come directly to my Inbox in the future?
A. When you use the Not Junk link, the message will be delivered to your Inbox and a copy will be submitted to the Forefront Spam Team for analysis. Forefront will make the determination to allow or not allow the mail through in the future. You may need to mark messages from particular senders more than once in order for Forefront to learn that the sender is not sending spam.
Q. What happens to the E-Mail messages in the FOPE quarantine?
A. Spam is kept in the Quarantine service for 14 days. After that time, the messages are assumed to be spam and are permanently deleted and cannot be retrieved.
Q. What is the default notification period of spam quarantine notifications?
A. Users will receive consolidated notifications that will be sent out every 7 days. If users need to check their spam more frequently users can log into their Quarantine mailbox at any time.
Q. What does the notification e-mail look like?
A. 
Q. How do I know whether the notification is a forgery?
A. If you read your e-mail within a browser, you should make sure your browser is a current version and configured with anti-phishing filters to avoid a re-direct to a non legitimate site. Additionally, you should check whether the URL is:
https://quarantine.messaging.microsoft.com
Q. Sometimes Exchange says “the link has been blocked for my protection”, what is causing that?
A. In OWA if the message has been forwarded, the link may be disabled.
Q. Can I change the notification interval of when I receive reports from Forefront?
A. No, you cannot change the notification interval. All users will receive a notification every 7 days. If you do not want to receive a notification, log in to your Forefront quarantine mailbox account at https://quarantine.messaging.microsoft.com to turn off the notification. Your Forefront username is your SF State e-mail address.
Q. What if I don't want to receive a spam report from FOPE?
A. Spam notification can be turned off for individual accounts. Users can make the change from within the Quarantine service by clicking Options located above the top menu bar. Users can then select or un-select the option to send notifications. Once done click on Save to keep the changes.
Q. The spam quarantine shows a very small amount of spam blocked compared to what is reported as filtered out by the FOPE services. What happened to all the spam?
A. The spam quarantine notification you receive will not show you any messages that have already been identified by Forefront as definite spam or that are known to come from spam senders. You are only seeing the messages that are considered "likely spam" and are being presented to you for additional review to determine whether you want to filter them out as well.
Q. How much spam is already pre-filtered by Forefront ?
A. Over 93% of the incoming messages to @sfsu.edu are categorized as “definitely spam” based on the source and well-known spam content. This is fairly typical across the Internet today and why automated screening of e-mail is absolutely necessary. Most of this e-mail is successfully filtered out by Forefront based on a number of heuristic engines. However, it can’t figure out everything on its own which is why the “quarantine” presented to you helps customize it for the types of messages you uniquely receive.
Q. The Forefront quarantine mailbox account password does not synchronize with my SF State password. How do I reset my password?
A. To reset your Forefront quarantine mailbox account password, access the log in page at https://quarantine.messaging.microsoft.com and click on the Change password link. Your Forefront username is your SF State e-mail address.
Q. What do I do with spam messages that are not blocked by Forefront, but are delivered to my Inbox?
A. Outlook users may download and install the Junk E-mail Reporting Tool for Outlook. This tool will add a button to the toolbar in Outlook that will directly report junk e-mail to Microsoft and its affiliates for analysis to help them improve the effectiveness of their junk e-mail filtering technologies.
For further instructions, please see How to report phishing attempts and other spam e-mail on the Univeristy's Phishing page.
Q. The Spam filter caught a legitimate piece of e-mail. What do I do?
A. Send a copy of the message along with full Internet headers to FOPE False Positive team at false_positive@messaging.microsoft.com.
