Email Security - antispam and antivirus protection
The mailserver automatically deletes mail sent by the most prolific spamers. For additional checks you need to know these things:
- SpamAssassin is not enabled by default, login to your Mailbox Control Panel with your email username and password to set it up
- Tell your email software what to do with messages tagged as spam. The recommended option is move to spam folder
- Advanced settings allow you to set the filter sensitivity. The higher you set it the more chance it will tag a genuine message
Got a question? Read below or contact me.
Your email account is protected against spam and viruses.
First the mailserver carries out some basic checks. Then mail is delivered to your your mailbox where you get full control over what happens next.
Settings can be adjusted for each mailbox through your Mailbox Control Panel.
This is how it works.
On the mailserver
When email arrives at the server the following checks are carried out.
Antispam
Incoming email is checked against the Spamhaus Zen database. Email from known spammers is rejected.
Antivirus
Incoming mail is scanned for viruses. Infected messages are deleted.
In your mailbox
Once mail is delivered to your mailbox the following options are available.
Antispam
SpamAssassin can be enabled on your mailbox. It can be set to tag or delete spam.
Tagging spam - the email will be delivered to your inbox and special tags will be added. The tags allow you to control what your email program does next. If you want to see the spam score applied to the message add _SCORE_ to the subject line.
Deleting spam - the email will be deleted by the server and cannot be recovered. If SpamAssassin makes a mistake the email is lost.
You can also adjust the sensitivity of the filter and create white and blacklists.
SpamAssassin must be enabled manually because of its ability to delete messages.
Antivirus
Antivirus is enabled by default. You can switch it on or off for your mailbox
Automating spam removal
Once spam email reaches your inbox the tags added by SpamAssassin come into play.
Rules can be created to put tagged emails straight in the Spam folder, delete them or anything else you choose.
Training the spam filter
To improve the accuracy of spam detection you can train the spam filter through webmail or if your email software connects to the mailserver via IMAP simply by moving spam to the Spam folder.
Technical notes
- To reduce server load messages larger than 200kb are not scanned by the spam filter
- The default tag added to the Subject of spam email is
- ***SPAM***
- To include the spam score
- _SCORE_
- To increase or decrease the spam filter sensitivity (see Advanced settings in the control panel) change the default setting from 7. This is best done by checking the spam score your messages receive and judging whether adjusting the sensitivity is right for you
- The default headers added to spam emails are
- X-Spam-Flag: Yes
- X-Spam-Status: Yes