Email spam is a very frustrating reality of the online world we live in. Many tools have been developed along the way to try and combat this probelm including both server and desktop solutions. This tutorial will guide you through enabling Spam Assassin on your hosting account using your cPanel.

Spam Assassin is a very effective antipsam tool and it is offered with all of FASTdot's cPanel hosting plans. By default Spam Assassin is disabled in your cPanel but it is a relatively simple procedure to activate it. The key is configuring it to offer you extra protection whilst producing as few false positives as possible.

Enabling Spam Assassin

Once logged into your cPanel you will see Spam Assassin located under the Mail tab.

Clicking on the link will take you to the main configuration page where you will see a variety of options. To get started, simply select the "Enable Spam Assassin" button. This will turn Spam Assassin on using its default settings.

Filters

The default filter level is set to 5 which is good for most end users. A higher number will result in less spam getting tagged and reduces false positives. You can always change this number down the track if you find you get a high level of false positives.

e.g.
Low threshhold = 5 (default)
Medium threshold = 7.5 (slightly less spam caught but fewer false positives)
High threshold = 10 (much less spam caught but least likely to produce false positives)

You can also select to automatically delete spam as soon as it arrives. This can be helpful in keeping things easy to manage but is generally only recommended if you can deal with occassionally losing legitimate emails. Again, you need to be very careful with the settings you apply to reduce the chance of false positives.

Spam Box

When you first enable Spam Assassin it will simply tag emails as spam by putting ***SPAM*** in front of the subject(unless you have enabled "Auto-Delete Spam"). This setting allows you to then configure your email client to filter these message based on the tag. Enabling the Spam Box means that rather than emails just being tagged they are actualy moved to special folder on the server, therefore not actually getting to your desktop inbox. This folder is automatically created when the first spam message is caught.

The upside to enabling the Spam Box is that you avoid having to download unccessary junk, yet you can easily login to your webmail account to see if a message has ended up there by mistake. The downside to filtering with this method is that you then need to frequently login to cPanel to empty the Spam Box, otherwise it will use up your valuable disk space.

Configure Spam Assassin

This section provides you with a few advanced settings that can assist in either blocking or allowing mail based on a prtucluar address or an entire domain. For exmaple, if you were constantly losing emails from one company you could add their domain to the Whitelist, therefore telling Spamm Assassin that it is legitimate and to let it through. You can also do the exact opposite by blocking addresses using the Blacklist. Both the Blaicklist and Whitelist work in the same way and can accept wild cards * and ?; e.g. *@isp.com or *.domain.com.

To add a name to either list just put it in the appropriate box and hit save.

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