SpamAssassin and Virus Scanning installed

[NexDog]

Last month we had a discussion about combatting spam and viruses and the possibility of installing software to help in this fight. The overwhelming opinion was that we do so as soon as possible. Well, we have finally implemented SpamAssassin and a Virus Scanner on all servers!

SpamAssassin is completely configurable through our SquirrelMail webmail software. Go to Options and on the bottom right, you will see Spam Filter Configuration. Within the settings, you can whitelist and blacklist and you can also set SpamAssassin's point system to mark spam. The filter uses a point system of 0-10. Zero being zero tolerance. SpamAssassin assigns a point or score to certain variables in an email and if they all add up to your spam setting (e.g. 5), the email will be marked as **spam**. If you would like to know how the filter assigns its scores, please visit:

http://www.spamassassin.org/tests.html

You can also enter the text to aidentity spam (**spam** is the default) and in the Message Filters section of SquirrelMail, you can filter tagged email to a certain folder that you can occasionally check and delete.

In addition to the above, all email is first piped through an Virus Scanner before it reaches SpamAssassin. If a virus is identified, the email is removed and an email will be sent to the sender and the recipient notifying that a virus in the email was detected and the email was deleted.

I will start a thread in the General Support forum about SpamAssassin and VirusScan and please feel free to post any experiences with it, any issues etc. This is part 2 of our busy July and I hope that you all find it a beneficial addition to our service here at HostNexus.

[Keokea]

Thanks for adding these functions, they will be quite valuable. It seems the default filter value for Spam Assassin is none, so folks will need to access the configuration to turn it on. Glad to have the option, thank you.

[gert]

Is SpamAssasin turned on by default? If so, how does it handle spam and how is it set?

I have +100 domains. Must I log into every domain and change settings or can I do this one place only?

Kindest regards
Gert

[RobbieLePommie]

Turned off by default.

Looks like it's set per mailbox (ie. per user, not just per domain). I'd also like to know if we can copy the settings....

[NexDog]

The idea is that everyone who has a mailbox configures it how they want. If you read my first post, it tells you how the filter scores spam.

[BillSamuel]

I was about to write encouraging this step be made priority over completing NexusPortal, but you guys got ahead of that and got it up before I could nudge you. Thanks!

But I agree that having to configure it separately for each mailbox will be quite an effort for some.

[BillSamuel]

I have set everything at the recommended level of 5, and for **SPAM** labeling. Everything so labeled is message filtered into a Spam folder. But this does not seem to be working right. I am getting labeled spam which should be filtered out.

In the X-Spam-Status, I just got an e-mail that said "hits=7.7 required=5.0". Last I knew, 7.7 was higher than 5.0. Why didn't it get filtered out?

I've thought of a possibility. I don't normally read e-mail using Webmail, but have everything sent on to my regular ISP e-mail address. When I asked before, I was told SpamAssassin would work in this situation. But it's possible that what SpamAssassin itself does (mark the e-mail) does, but the rest doesn't. It may be be doing the forwarding before processing my message filtering for the Spam label. Is this what is happening? If so, the spam filtering only partially works for redirected e-mail addresses.

[Keokea]

Because the 7.7 score was higher than the 5 limit, it labelled and packaged the message before sending it on, as expected -- but your analysis that the mail server's forwarding function is overriding the webmail redirection function is probably correct. A possible solution: set up a Spam folder, using your local email client, and have messages labelled Spam sent there by your email software.

[BillSamuel]

That's a very partial solution. I had hoped to keep it from being redirected at all, and that is what I had previously understood it would do.

This "solution" would not deal with the problem of spam overloading one's email box limit. In fact, it makes it much worse as it provides the entire spam plus a lot of stuff that it adds, therefore increasing the space taken by the spam in one's email box.

[NexDog]

Please use the thread in General Support to discus SpamAssassin.