Spamassasin "101"

[Xant]

Dear Family

 

The number of Spam I've been receiving through my TCH account went to the roof... Although reluctant at first, I turned SpamAssasin spam filtering ON.

 

Still, doesn't seems to have much effect on reducing the number of Spam I continue to receive. Is there any required configuration that I'm not aware of? Is there any need to point to some sort of Spam database?

 

Thank you all and always,

 

Xant

[nortk]

I believe that turning it on is not enough. SpamAssassin flags e-mail with a spam score, but then it is up to you to decide what to do with that spam score.

 

For example, I recently turned on SpamAssassin, but then I also went into my Thunderbird e-mail options (under the "Junk Mail" controls) and checked the box that says to "Trust junk mail headers set by: SpamAssassin".

 

Depending on your e-mail client, there are other approaches. For example, you can have SpamAssassin modify the subject line of your messages, and then tell your e-mail client to examin those subject lines when your mail arrives.

[TCH-Bruce]

The other thing to check is are these emails addressed to valid email accounts you have set up or are they addresses to whatever@yourdomain.ext?

 

If it's the latter make sure you set your default email account in cPanel to :fail:

 

That will cut down on a considerable amount of spam to addresses that don't exist.

[Xant]

Nortk

 

I'm a bit confused since the subject is not changed, but the body is marked as spam. And it was still been delivered.

 

Then, I just found the following:

"To simply have the server DELETE and NOT deliver emails that are tagged as spam by SpamAssassin, click here now."

 

I clicked in the option, which seems to add an extra scripting that might delete the email at once.

 

 

TCH-Bruce

 

Spam (tons) is been delivered to my personal email that I created under my domain.

 

Thank you all,

 

Xant

[TCH-Bruce]

Have you set up a filter to discard messages marked by Spam Assassin instead of delivering them?

 

Spam Assassin does not delete messages, just tags them. You need to either filter them server side or client side.

 

To do it server side go into cPanel and select Mail. Then select EMail Filtering.

 

Add a new filter.

Select Spam Assassin Spam Header in the first dropdown.

Select begins with in the second dropdown.

Enter Yes in the third box.

Enter Discard in the next box to have them deleted or you can enter an email address to send them to.

 

If you want to do it client side (your PC), then build a filter that will rewrite the subject so you can build a filter in your email program to handle them.

[Xant]

Thank you Bruce.... I will try "discard" at server. This seems to be the missing link I was looking for.

 

Regards,

 

Xant

[TCH-Bruce]

What I did before I chose to discard them to be sure they were all spam messages being caught was set up another email account and forward them there. Once I was satisfied it was only catching spam I set it to discard and removed the email account I was forwarding too.

[Xant]

Bruce

 

I might be in the same route as your previous experience. As mentioned, I setup for deletion, and it seems to be working.

 

Now, I'm doing further experimenting as you mentioned. Removed the deletion process and will forward to some sort of Spam box. I will verify and then might return to immediate deletion.

 

Regards

[TCH-Bruce]

Yes, I find it's better to be safe than sorry. Let us know how it goes for you.