Email Tutorial - Virus Filtering
<return
to overview>
Our spam filtering is powered by one of
the worlds leading anti-spam technologies, "SpamAssassin".
SpamAssassin is provided free on all our
email accounts and is set to a default value where we
simply identify spam but we don't delete
the emails in your email box. That's your decision!
From your Email Dashboard, you can configure
SpamAssassin to either tag or delete spam, adjust the
spam threshold, or disable altogether.
SpamAssassin does a great job at filtering
spam/junk email. For those clients who want an even
more powerful spam filtering tool, we offer MXLogic.
Please contact us for details and pricing on this additional
service.
SpamAssassin works by assigning a "spam
score" to every piece of email that comes in. The
higher the score, the more likely it is to be spam.
Messages scored 5 and up are very likely to be spam.
Messages scored 2 and under are very likely to be legitimate.
In addition, SpamAssassin looks to other
spams references such as DNS Blacklists to identify
spam.
As a default, your spam filtering is account
is set with a spam score of 5, no reports are generated
and the Subject Line of spam is rewritten to insert
***** SPAM ***** into it. We do not
delete email messages that are suspected spam.
It's up to you to set other configurations
and tools.
We recommend starting out with the default
settings to get used to how the system works, then adjust
the threshold to minimize spam that is let through.
Here are some recommendations, though:
- Tag mode is recommended. That means
that spam will be indentified as such in the Subject
Line.
- If you are using Outlook
to download your email from the server, you can set
rules that automatically put these "tagged"
emails to your Outlook Junk E-Mail folder. To learn
how to do that, go <here>.
NOTE:
If you don't set up rules and junk email filtering
in Outlook, the tagged spam email may still go to
your Outlook Inbox. So, your first step if you use
Outlook 2003, is to set it up correctly!
- You will most likely not need to see
reports on why a specific email was flagged as spam.
So, the No Reports default should be fine for most
users.
- If you want to get really agressive
with your spam filtering, check the RBL, Razor and
DCC boxes. However, realize that aggressive spam filtering
may flag legitimate email.
- Selecting the automated move of spam
out of your inbox to spam folders via the Email Dashboard
will not allow you to download these moved emails
to your email client such as Outlook. (Email clients
download only from email inboxes on servers.)
- Deleting spam-tagged messages means
that spam meeting your set threshold will be deleted
at the server level and will thus not be downloaded
to your email client (such as Outlook). They are gone
and cannot be retrieved, so be extremely
careful with this selection which we do not recommend.
| Getting
to your spam filtering |
You need to get to your Email Dashboard
to configure your spam filtering. Go <here>
to learn how to do that...
1 - From your Email Dashboard, click on
SpamAssassin. Clicking on the SpamAssassin
button will open a drop-down menu with 3 options:
| Setting
your spam filtering preferences |
| |
|
General
Config
|
Required
Hits (Spam Score)
SpamAssassin works by assigning a "spam
score" to every piece of email that comes in.
The higher the score, the more likely it is to be
spam. Messages scored 5 and up are very likely to
be spam. Messages scored 2 and under are very likely
to be legitimate. Between
1 and 5, you'll usually find a mixture of spam
and real mail, and your experience will vary within
that range. The Required Hits field lets you change
the threshold, i.e. what score a message needs.
You can lower it if you're still getting too much
spam, or raise it if you find real email marked
as spam.
Spam Reporting
If a message is identified as Spam, a report of
the spam reasons can be attached to the offending
message. This may give you a better idea on what
SpamAssassin is detecting in the emails. Most
users will not want to bother with reports...
Subject Rewriting
Once identified, the mail can then be optionally
tagged as spam for later filtering using your
own mail client.
You can configure what text is added,
the default is to add ***** SPAM ***** to the
subject.
Auto-Whitelist
Everytime someone sends you an email
SpamAssassin will remember the senders address
and after 3 or 4 emails of non-spam will consider
the sender as someone who sends non-spam emails.
Use RBL Checks
Choose whether SpamAssassin
should use RBLs (DNS Blacklists). These are lists
maintained by other people of common spam senders
based on their IP addresses or domains
used inside the email.
Use Razor
Choose whether to compare message checksums
to known spam in the worldwide Razor databases.
Use DCC
Choose whether to compare message checksums
to known spam in the worldwide DCC databases.
Email Filter Run Mode
This is how spam should
be handled:
- Default Run Mode:
This will deliver mail to your mailbox so you
can filter the mail in your email client.
- Move to Spam folder:
Delivers all mail which is detected as spam
into a folder which can be accessed in <openwebmail>
named 'spam'
- Auto-Delete Spam:
Any emails which met your requirements will
be deleted completely. When the emails are deleted
they CANNOT be restored. Use
this option with caution!
- Disable Email Filter:
This option will turn the filtering off so that
emails are never scanned or tagged.
|
Black/White
List
|
White List
Email addresses added here have a lot
lesser chance of being classified as spam. Rmails
on this list may still be classified if they are
very high (about 3-4 times higher than normal)
scoring spam.
Black List
Email addresses mentioned here will always
be classified as spam and will be treated as spam.
NOTE: This will not
automatically delete the emails unless you have
set the Run Mode to delete (see above). |
| |
|
Block
by TLD
|
Block Email
from TLD
You may select domain extensions that you know will
be sending you spam, this works in the same was
as the Black Lists but will check if the senders
domain is from one of the selected TLDs or countries.
|
If you wish telephone support to set up
your spam filtering beyond our free, default settings,
we offering this at our standard rates of $70/hr.
<return
to overview>
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