Configure the SpamAssassin Threshold Score When it is on, SpamAssassin marks high-scoring emails by inserting ***SPAM*** into the message’s header. This is the switch that turns email testing on and off. The first setting on the Spam Filters overview page is “Process New Emails and Mark them as Spam.” To configure it, select Spam Filters in the Email section of the cPanel Home interface. SpamAssassin is fully integrated into the cPanel interface, and you can tweak its settings to get exactly the right spam filtering functionality for your users. The Best Settings for SpamAssassin in cPanel It’s important to understand the SpamAssassin score because you can use it to configure email filtering sensitivity in cPanel, as we’ll talk about in the next section. If it’s a three, it has some of the qualities of junk mail, but the software is less confident. If a message scores ten, it is definitely spam. The lower the score, the more likely a message is legitimate. As messages are analyzed, the software keeps a running total, adding the individual test results to produce a combined score. Each test has a number associated with it, often a small number like 0.1 or –0.2. The SpamAssassin score tells us how likely an email is to be spam. SpamAssassin ships with around 1,000 tests and each email message is subjected to about 600 or more individual tests. SpamAssassin supports several free blocklists by default, including Mailspike and SpamHaus. DNS blocklists (DNSBLs) - These are online lists that software can query to see if a message comes from a known source of junk email.For example, the Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse hosts patterns matching bulk emails. Online databases - Online databases store examples of messages flagged by users and email hosts.For example, there are tests for long runs of text in capital letters, commonly promoted products, or words such as “money” or “win.” There are even tests to find out whether a sender has used red-flag words but tried to disguise them. Phrase and language tests - These encode a language pattern that indicates whether a message is more or less likely to be spam.However, the software has been refined over many years with hundreds of sophisticated tests that can identify junk mail with great accuracy. Language is complex the definition of “unwanted email” changes depending on the context, and spammers try to hide their real goal. It looks for patterns that are common in unwanted email and, if a message matches lots of patterns, tells us that it’s probably not something you want to see.Įmail filtering isn’t an exact science. SpamAssassin works in the same way but on a much bigger scale. When that happens, we’re pattern-matching: our brains have learned to associate specific words, phrases, typography, and grammar with unwanted email. We know what it looks like, and, usually, alarm bells start ringing in our minds even if we can’t say precisely why. We all receive spam and can recognize what it is right away. What Is SpamAssassin and How Does It Work? To make sure we understand how it works, let’s take a close look at what SpamAssassin is, how it works, and the best settings for SpamAssassin in cPanel. Apache SpamAssassin flags spam to remove it before it gets to users. If you host email, you need a way to identify and filter unwanted messages, and cPanel integrates one of the most sophisticated filtering tools available. Still, hundreds of billions of messages are sent every year by automated botnets that collect email addresses, compromise servers, and bombard users with malicious advertising and phishing attacks. The good thing is ISPs and hosting providers are better at stamping out spammers, and users are more aware of the risks. Most unwanted messages never reach inboxes, but an incredible 54 percent of all email traffic is spam, and that’s down from 70 percent a decade ago. Spam is a huge challenge for anyone who hosts email, even though users only see a tiny fraction of the spam they’re sent.
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