How our Spam and Virus Filtering Works

How does your new system work? How do I customize spam and virus filtering for my domain? How do I whitelist or blacklist e-mail addresses? How can I be more or less aggressive in identifying spam?

How does your new system work? Incoming e-mail is scanned by SpamAssassin. The subject of the e-mail is prefaced by {Spam?} if SpamAssassin thinks it is probably spam, and by {Definitely Spam?} if SpamAssassin thinks it is almost certainly spam. This makes it easy for you to filter out messages which are likely to be spam. Incoming e-mail is also scanned for viruses, and infected messages are silently deleted. back to top How do I customize spam and virus filtering for my domain? Login to Control Panel and click the icon labeled "MailScanner Configuration." Note that this icon replaces the old "SpamAssassin" icon which was available prior to installing our new spam and virus filtering system. You will be greeted by a screen with a lot of information. The settings you should adjust first are near the bottom of this screen under the label "Change Individual Domain Settings." Here are some guidelines: Use Spam Scanning and Virus Scanning to turn these features on or off. The Low Scoring Spam and High Scoring Spam columns allow you to specify what happens to e-mail which is identified as spam. Your options are to deliver it, to delete it, or to deliver it to an alternate e-mail address. By default all e-mail is delivered, but most people will prefer to delete "High Scoring Spam" and deliver "Low Scoring Spam" to an alternate address. Note that the e-mail account "spam" at your domain is not automatically setup. If you want to use the "spam" address at your domain, you must create an e-mail account or forwarder for it. Or you can create another alternate address for delivery of spam by clicking the "Other" link at the top of the MailScanner Configuration screen. Deliver Cleaned Emails should generally be set to "no," but if you set it to "yes" then virus-infected e-mail will be delivered after the virus is removed. Nowadays most virus-infected e-mail has been sent automatically by a virus, so there is rarely a meaningful message attached. back to top How do I whitelist or blacklist e-mail addresses? You can specify that e-mail from some addresses should get special treatment. If you whitelist an address, then e-mail coming from that address is never considered spam. If you blacklist an address, then e-mail from that address is always considered as "High Scoring" spam. To whitelist or blacklist addresses, click the link at the top of the MailScanner Configuration screen labeled "Email Black/Whitelist settings." The next screen allows you to enter up to 30 addresses each to whitelist or blacklist. Note that you can enter a full e-mail address or a wildcard. For example, you might wish to whitelist my_friend@gmail.com, but blacklist *@get-your-watches-here.com. back to top How can I be more or less aggressive in identifying spam? Click the link near the top of the MailScanner Configuration screen labeled "Other settings." The next screen lets you adjust how aggressive you want to be in handling spam. SpamAssassin assigns a numeric value to each e-mail to indicate the likelihood that it is spam. A higher number means it is more likely to be spam. By default, anything over 5 is considered "Low Scoring Spam" (probably spam) and anything over 20 is considered "High Scoring Spam" (almost definitely spam). If you want to be more aggressive, you can lower these numbers, which also increases the risk that you might identify a legitimate piece of e-mail as spam. If you want to be safer, you can raise these numbers, which will increase the likelihood that spam will not be identfied as such. back to top

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