Spam and how to stop it
Level 1: Anti-Virus and known blacklists (via SpamCop) - we block dangerous emails at the server level based on known characteristics and SpamCop's blacklist. These emails are deleted immediately, and there is no way to retreive them. These are the worst offenders and it is very unlikely that false positives would be deleted. We apply the latest blacklist and antivirus rules as soon as they are available from our vendor. Occasionally, new types of spam will sneak through. It may be a while before the vendor updates the ruleset, so this is why you would see waves of spam for a few days and then see it tapering off.
Level 2: SpamAssassin - You must enable SpamAssassin in your control panel (http://www.yourdomain.com/cpanel) This will mark all potential spam in the header line for filtering by your email program on your local computer. You can optionally activate SpamBox (recommended, as long as you remember to clear out the SpamBox every so often) to keep the spam on your account in the server. Again, occasionally, new types of spam will sneak through. It may be a while before the vendor updates the ruleset, so this is why you would see waves of spam for a few days and then see it tapering off.
See these links for help using spam filters in Cpanel:
http://twiki.cpanel.net/twiki/bin/view/AllDocumentation/CpanelDocs/SpamAssassin
http://twiki.cpanel.net/twiki/bin/view/AllDocumentation/CpanelDocs/UserFiltering
http://twiki.cpanel.net/twiki/bin/view/AllDocumentation/CpanelDocs/AccountFiltering
We recommend you add a third level on your local machine. Our favorites are SpamSieve for Mac ( http://c-command.com/spamsieve/ ) and CloudMark for PC ( http://www.cloudmark.com/ )
For more information, we have produced a 10 minute tutorial that covers this topic in more depth.
http://youtube.com/group/sustainablewebsites
Category: Knowledgebase
Created on: June 9th, 2008
