This tutorial covers the basic use of the spam filters on Cottonwoods Creations mail server. The main spam filter on the server is "Spamassassin". It is very straight forward and easy to use. You access it's control from your control panel by clicking on the spam button.



As you can see from the photo below you have 3 main choices:

1. Manage Spamassassin

2. Manage AntiVirus Settings

3. Manage Wordassassin



Now...a brief discription of each.

1. Below is an image of your master spam filtering panel. When you click on it you will go to a page with a dropdown box offering you three choices called " Mail Filter Options"

Here you select your settings for:

1. General Configuration

2. Black and White List

3. Block Email from TLD



First let's go through General Configuration:



First item in the white box is "Required Hits":
This is nothing more than a grading system for emails to determain whether or not they are spam.
Even valid mail will get a grade however.
Usually (not always) spam will collect more points than a valid piece of mail.
The default setting is "5". To be honest a setting of "5" is almost worthless for filtering
out spam as a knowledgable spammer can keep his number under "3".

You can set your setting to anything between "0 - 10" including 10ths of a point.
[Example: 3.7 or 1.5 or 5.2 ect.]
The lower the number...the better it filters...however if you get too low it can start filtering
out valid emails.

The next item is "Spam Reporting":
This is pretty straight forward...the default "No Reports" is don't send me a report. You can have an attachement
or text printed on your email telling you if the filter thinks an email is spam.
Personally to me this seems to elimanate any usefulness of having a filter because it still delivers
the spam to your mail box. "I leave mine in default."

The next item is "Subject Writing":
Basically it puts the word "spam" in the subject box of any email that has a high enough score.
The one thing it can help with is identifying "False Positives" in other words valid mail that has
been identified as spam....but then again it get delivered to your mail box...and if it is spam
you have defeated the purpose of the filter.

The next item is "Auto Whitelist": As near as I can figure it reads the "TO" of your outgoing emails
and adds that person to your "White list". (trusted senders)

The next 3 items are the filters themselves...just tick them all.
If you want to know more about them Google the name of the filter.

The next items is "Email Filter Run Mode":
A fancy term for telling the program what to do with an email it has "labels as Spam".
Personally I use "Auto Delete"...if it's spam I don't want it.
But you say what if it's a friend of mine? Then added them to your "White List"
That Guarranties them access. (well it's suppose too anyway)

The last item is "Forward Email" Oh Joy! I'm sure you want to load 2 mail boxes with
the same piece of spam! Not me!! ( I would leave that blank)

The buttons at the bottom are:
"Back To User List": This is where you entered your control panel.

"Back": Takes you back to the page you where at just before where you are now.

"Save Changes": This saves your setup...if you don't use it, all your selections will be lost.

OK...now on to the second item on the "Mail Filter Options" dropdown menu.

"White List and Black list" :

White list people you like...black list the ones you don't...it's that simple.
You can add whole addresses or domains to either list.
[Example: John@ABC.net This affects only "John" or ABC.net this affects anyone from abc.net]


The last item in the "Mail Filter Options" is "Block Email from TLD"
A TLD is the last part of a domain name.[ Example: ".com" ".net" ".org" ect.]

If you click on "Show All TLD's" it will expand the list to show all the major TLD's throughout the world.
( The list is long, so I had to make 2 images)


The way this is suppose to work is it blocks all from a given TLD.
Let's say you are getting alot of spam from Korea. Their country TLD is ".kr"
If you tick the ".kr" on this list it should block all mail with the ".kr" at the end of the domain name.
I say "should" as I'm not convinced this filter works effectively.
You can try it...but don't expect much.
Ok...that finishes off the use of "General Configurations of Spamassassin".


Now on to the second item on the main list "Manage AntiVirus Settings".



Again, this is pretty straight forward...



My suggestion is use it just the way you see it setup here in the photo or tick off if you don't wish to use it.

Moving on........

The last item on the list is "WordAssassin".



This is actually a pretty cool tool :)



Your choices from this panel's dropdown menu are:
Disable, Tag Caught Mail, Delete Caught Mail, Move to folder (IMAP), Move to folder (Webmail and Pine), Forward to email address Below.


The "Disable" does exactly as it states...turns off WordAssassin
The "Tag" option puts what ever word is in the "Tag Text" box in the subject column of the email.
"Delete Caught Mail" does as it states...if a word in your list is anywhere in the email it will delete that email.
Obviously you need to use care in what words you put in this list!!
However you can exempt (Whitelist) people from this filter so if your girlfriend wants to talk about her boyfriend's equipment,
or the hair loss drug her doctor gave her, she can :)
Don't bother with the move to folder options as you don't have these options except "Webmail".
The "Forward to email address" does exactly as it states.


Well kiddies...that pretty well covers it.
I hope you have found this tutorial helpful and please remember the little questionmarks next to things will give you a brief discription should you forget a function.


Have a Great Day!!