How to Manage Spam Filters

Managing Spam Filters for Your Email

SillyHost includes Apache SpamAssassin on all hosting plans to help filter unwanted emails. You can customise the spam filter settings and create additional rules through cPanel.

Enabling SpamAssassin

1. Log in to cPanel and go to the Email section.
2. Click on Spam Filters.
3. Toggle the switch to enable Apache SpamAssassin if it is not already active.
4. Optionally, enable Auto-Delete Spam to automatically remove emails that score above a certain threshold. Be cautious with this setting as it permanently deletes flagged emails.

Adjusting the Spam Threshold

SpamAssassin assigns a spam score to every incoming email. The lower the threshold, the more aggressive the filtering. The default score is 5, which is suitable for most users.

• Score 3-4: Aggressive filtering. May catch some legitimate emails (false positives).
• Score 5: Balanced setting. Recommended for most users.
• Score 7-8: Lenient filtering. Only the most obvious spam is caught.

Creating Custom Filters

For more granular control, use cPanel's Email Filters tool:

1. Go to Email Filters in the Email section of cPanel.
2. Select the email account you want to create a filter for.
3. Click Create a New Filter.
4. Set conditions such as "From contains" or "Subject contains" and define actions like "Discard Message" or "Redirect to folder".
5. Click Create to save the filter.

Whitelisting and Blacklisting

• Whitelist: To ensure emails from a specific sender always arrive, add their address to the SpamAssassin whitelist. Go to Spam Filters > Show Additional Configurations and add the address under whitelist_from.
• Blacklist: To always block a sender, add their address under blacklist_from in the same section.

Dealing with Persistent Spam

If you are receiving large volumes of spam despite filtering, consider tightening your spam threshold, disabling any catch-all forwarders, and checking that your email address is not published publicly on your website in plain text.