This FAQ has been creating to help understand Megaphat Philter more clearly. These questions have been asked by clients, interested parties and other questions our technical experts feel may be useful to help understand more about this incredible product. If you would like to have your question added to our FAQ, send us an email: sales@megaphat.com

What is Megaphat Philter Gateway?
Megaphat Philter Gateway is a software product that is installed on your Windows-based operating system. MPG works as a system service and it may be installed on either your incoming mail server or another remote server such as a firewall server or other Internet accessible computer. The purpose of Megaphat Philter is to block potential unsolicited bulk email and junk email. Figure 1 best demonstrates this concept.

Figure 1 (click to enlarge)


What is an Incoming Mail Server?
When email is sent, it is received by a mail server, known as an SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol) server. This is considered to be your Incoming Mail Server.

What is meant by a Remote Server?
A Remote Server is another server which may not necessarily be your primary Incoming Mail Server. This Remote Server may be used for other purposes, act as a spare server or even a firewall.

How exactly does MPG work for me?
Megaphat Philter Gateway uses a technology called DNSBL. MPG determines which email may be unwanted (spam) or potentially dangerous (contains virii, trojans, adware, etc) based on where the email originates from as well as enforcing RFC guidelines (which are not enforced by many junk mail senders), then prevents that email from being delivered to your mail server. When MPG blocks the reception of this unwanted mail, you save bandwidth expense at preventing the actual connection and data throughput. Also you save at the expense of your mail server not having to receive large amounts of unwanted mail, processing power, storage resources and the resources at the recipient computer as well. Figure 2 demonstrates how Megaphat Philter communicates with DNSBL databases and determines legitimate mail sources.

Figure 2 (click to enlarge)


What if the mail being sent is legitimate and MPG blocks it?
It is possible that the DNSBL databases list the originator of legitimate email as spam. In cases such as this, you may inform MPG that the originator is legitimate by including their IP address into a "whitelist", which is instantly approved for delivery by MPG. Alternatively if it a network block, you may assign the entire block to the whitelist.

What if I use MPG and it does not block some spam?
Not all spam can be blocked, but as a good countermeasure, using a technology such as MPG certainly reduces the quantity significantly. There are over 200 different DNSBL databases and if one specific database does not have an sender address listed, you can certainly configure MPG to use another one which may have it listed. Alternatively you can instruct MPG to "manually block" a specific originating IP address or an entire network class to avoid searching for a database which may contain that entry.

I am using the trial edition of MPG now and MPG stopped blocking. Why?
The trial edition is effective for 30 days then it expires. Once it expires, it no longer blocks any messages that may be otherwised blocked.

How many domains does Megaphat Philter support?
Megaphat Philter supports as many domains as the SMTP server that Megaphat Philter redirects to. Megaphat Philter is not based on a per-domain license or a per-user license. Megaphat Philter is based on a per-server license. This means that Megaphat Philter will allow any number of connections for any number of domains with any number of users, so long as the redirected SMTP server supports the services.