E-mail works a lot like a postal letter. A postal letter can be sent to a home or business address. The envelope of the letter contains who the message is intended for and who it is from. The mailman puts the letter in the intended recipient's mailbox for pickup.

E-mail is sent in an envelope containing who the message is for and who it is from. If you are having Marvin protect your e-mail, mail sent to your address will arrive at Marvin to be scanned for viruses and spam before it is delivered to your e-mail inbox.

When inbound e-mail enters Marvin, it first arrives to servers running something called Sendmail. Sendmail is the most widely used e-mail server on the planet.

The first thing Sendmail does with the message is check to see if the e-mail address is valid. If it is not, it will reject the mail. If the message is valid, then Sendmail will pass the e-mail message onto the next step.

The next step is the Anti-Virus feature.

The first Marvin process that incoming e-mail goes through is Anti-Virus. This feature has an "On" or "Off" control. If it is "Off", then e-mail bypasses this and goes onto the first of the Anti-spam processes (Whitelist).

If the feature is "On", then Marvin will scan the message and attachments for viruses. If a virus is detected, the message is sent to the Virus/Spam Database. Messages that fail the virus process are not retrievable but do show up on the report that is sent out listing what Marvin has stopped.

If the message passes the virus process, it then proceeds onto the first Anti-spam process called Whitelist.

Marvin has multiple Anti-spam processes that scan e-mail messages in order to determine if it is spam or not. As spam evolves and changes, more processes can be inserted into Marvin within hours. The new feature then would be available to all Marvin customers to activate if desired.

E-mail will go through the Anti-spam processes in this order: Whitelist, Blacklist, DCC, SpamAssassin, Razor, DNSBL and then the Delay. To find out more about these processes, click on Tools under the Support link.

If a message fails any of the processes, it is sent to the Virus/Spam Database where it can be retrieved if desired. A report is sent out listing all of the messages that were flagged as spam and which process caught it. If a message looks like it may be desired, it can be retrieved via the web site. Read more about Report and Retrieve by clicking on the Support link and then click on Tools.

If a message passes all of the processes, it then is sent onto the final stage of Marvin to be delivered.