Copyright © 2004 PhD Computing
| Revision History | ||
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| Revision v1.0.0 | 2004-11-11 | MRJ |
| Initial Release | ||
Abstract
This tutorial explains how to configure the spam filter for your e-mail account at PhD Computing.
Table of Contents
The spam filtering settings for your account are configurable through our Web Mail interface.
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Note |
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This tutorial was written using the webmail interface for our current e-mail system. If you are still using the old system, replace the link http://webmail1.phdcomputing.net/ with http://webmail.phdcomputing.net/. If you are unsure which system you are on, you can contact PhD Computing and we can let you know. |
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To connect to the Web Mail interface, open a browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape, Safari) and go to http://webmail1.phdcomputing.net/.
Once the page appears, you need to login using your e-mail address and password.
Once you have logged in successfully, you will be at the mail screen of WebMail. To make any changes, you need to go into the Web Mail options section. To go into this section, you click the link labeled Options at the top of the screen. The link is circled in the graphic below.
Before you can set your spam settings, you need to fill in the personal information the settings require. To edit these settings, choose Personal Information from the Options section.
You only need to fill in the top two items for configuring your spam filter settings. Please make sure your e-mail address is filled in correctly, or your custom settings will not work.
Before making any adjustments to your settings, it is important to understand how the Spam filter works. This section will explain the settings and the background information you need to set the spam filter to what you need.
The most basic feature of the spam filter is a white/black list. You can put individual addresses or full domains on the list, either allowing them to bypass scanning, or to prevent you from getting e-mail from them.
The whitelist is a very handy feature. If e-mail from someone you know keeps being caught as spam, you can add their e-mail address to your whitelist, preventing the spam filter from examining e-mail from them in the future.
You will not likely have to use your blacklist. Please remember that most spammers use random e-mail addresses, and that a blacklist will not be effective because of this. You should only blacklist e-mail addresses that regularly send e-mail you do not want.
Our spam filter assigns a numerical score for each e-mail that it scans. This score shows how much similar to spam the e-mail is. A positive number means the e-mail has features that make it similar to spam. A negative number means the e-mail has features that make it similar to a legitimate e-mail. Each test it goes through adds or subtracts points, resulting in a final number.
The filter has two things it can do to e-mail. It will mark an e-mail as possible spam if it reaches a certain positive score number, and, if it reaches a higher score, will discard the message. You can control which scores are used for these behaviors.
Please remember that a higher score means the e-mail is more like spam, so if you set higher numbers for your score, more spam-like e-mail will get through. Setting lower numbers will tighten your settings, allowing less spam-like e-mail to get through. Remember that too low of a number will block good e-mail, and too high of a number will allow spam through. You will need to experiment with the scores to get the numbers right for you.
The SpamAssassin configuration page is the section where you will be able to make any the changes to the spam filter that you need. There are a lot of options on this page, so please read the sections carefully.
To change your spam filter settings, choose SpamAssassin Configuration from the Options section.
If you forgot to enter in the personal information the filter needs, you will see a screen like the below image. Notice the red "Error" text at the top of the screen. If you see this, please confirm you have completed the steps in the "Editing your Personal Information" section of this document.
Once everything is ready for configuring the spam filter, the configuration page will look like the image below.
In this dialog, each major section is divided by a colored heading. Each of the headings is explained below.
Any e-mail addresses that you have added to be blocked or allowed will appear in this section. You will see the address, what type of entry it is (blacklist or whitelist), the priority it has, and any actions you can perform on the entry (Edit or Delete).
This section allows you to add new e-mail addresses to your whitelist and blacklist.
The e-mail address can be a whole address or part of an address (such as a domain). Using something like "john@express.com" will only affect mail from that specific address. If you want the entry to work for all mail from express.com, you would want to enter "@express.com".
The type entry lets you choose which list you want the address on. Whitelist makes the entry above be never considered spam. Blacklist will make the entry above always be considered spam.
Priority lets you choose how the rules affect each other. A lower number does not count as much as a higher number.
Using different priorities let you make up some complicated rules. For example, adding "belanna@aol.com" to the whitelist with a priority of 8 and "@aol.com" to the blacklist with a priority of 7 makes the spam filter consider an e-mail from belanna@aol.com valid mail, but e-mail from any other aol.com address is considered spam.
This section allows you to customize the scores used to determine what mail is considered spam.
Please make sure you understand how the point system works before changing the scoring rules. Using the wrong settings can either block valid mail, or be ineffective.
If you want to turn off all filtering, select the "Never Tag and Never Block" setting.
You can also create your own score levels in the custom policy section if the presets are not to your liking.