Chapter 15 Unified Threat Management for FortiOS 5.0 : Email filter : Email filter concepts : Email filter techniques : HELO DNS lookup
  
HELO DNS lookup
The FortiGate unit takes the domain name specified by the client in the HELO greeting sent when starting the SMTP session and does a DNS lookup to determine if the domain exists. If the lookup fails, the FortiGate unit determines that any messages delivered during the SMTP session are spam.