E-mail Spam

[phoenix70]

I dunno if this is the right place to post this, and I am not even clear what i am wanting to ask. So please bear with me lol. I am beginning to get lots of spam to my domain email account . So I was wondering if there is anything I can do to prevent this say in C panel. I know spam is a fact of live in emails after while, but I'm so fed up of it. Thanks for any help

[TCH-Thomas]

Sure, check my reply here.

[phoenix70]

thanks i have enabled spamassissin. Just a quick question. I am a little worried by enabling spamassissin that i won't get mail into my inbox that isn't spam, but spamassissin think it is. Does that make sense, or have I missed the point somewhere? lol

[TCH-Bruce]

At the default settings nothing you should be getting that is legitimate will be blocked. And if you find that something is blocked you can white list it. But you should really set your default address to :fail: which will eliminate 80% or better the messages you are getting.

[phoenix70]

My default address is set to :fail: what does :fail:mean? Also how do I know if something I need is going into my junk? Will it still come into my e-mail client? i use apple mail. sory for all the questions and thanks for your help

[TCH-Thomas]

With the option :fail: I believe that when an email to an non-existing address arrives it will be deleted without you knowing it.

There used to be a option called blackhole which sent a "sorry I the address is wrong" message to the sending address/server. But it´s no longer used or should not be used as I understand.

 

To have any emails that have been caught by spamassassin though to still be delivered, you could enable the spam box in your cpanel, but this will not however give you an option to receive any emails that fails (see above).

[SteveW]

Note that :fail: and SpamAssassin address two completely different situations, which people sometimes confuse.

 

:fail: addresses the situation when your server receives email to an address that does not exist at your website, such as xyzzy@yoursite or asdf@yoursite. It will discard all such mail without telling you. :fail: makes absolutely no determination as to whether an email is spam or not. The only reason it is such an effective spam fighting tool is that so much spam is sent to nonexistent addresses. However, :fail: will also discard mail where someone merely mistyped your address.

 

SpamAssassin does make a determination about whether an email is spam or not. However, by itself, it never deletes or discards an email, ever. It only tags (labels) it as spam. What happens to an email after it has been tagged as spam depends entirely on settings that you create.

 

If you only enable SpamAssassin and do nothing else, then your mail will be delivered as usual, with some of them labeled "Spam" in the headers.

 

If you want special handling for spam, you should create an email filter.

 

Go to cpanel > Email > Filters > Add Filter. There should be a "Hint" on that page:

 

To discard all email that SpamAssassin has marked as spam, follow the hint: Condition = "SpamAssassin spam header" starts with Yes. Destination = discard.

 

If you're worried that legitimate mail might be discarded, you should instead create a separate real email address in your account, whose only purpose is to receive spam. Then go to Add Filter and set that as the destination. Everything arriving in that inbox is something that SpamAssassin considered spam. It's presorted. You can quickly review it for legitimate mail and then delete all the rest of it.

 

(I do not recommend using Spam Box, which is an option you see on the SpamAssassin setup page. Spam Box is not a "real" email address, so it lacks the flexibility that a real email address has. It cannot be further filtered or forwarded, for example.)

[mike]

Hey Thomas,

 

I just checked my filters and I don't see a "SpamAssassin Spam Bar Header" choice in the drop-down.

[TCH-Bruce]

Maybe a picture will help.