If you are a webmaster and own a web server with a cpanel control panel then here's how to fight spam coming in all of your mail accounts. The feature is called SpamAssasin and its included in the latest versions of cpanel.
First of all you have to determine whether your cpanel version includes this feature or not. Login to your account and click 'Mail'. If you see a clickable option named 'SpamAssasin' then you're alright. Now let's see how it works.
Click on the 'SpamAssasin' link. You will be presented with a window where you can check the status of the software and configure it. On top you can see if it's enabled or not. If you see a message saying: 'SpamAssasin is currently: Disabled' then you need to enable the feature in order to block spam.
A little lower you will see a button called 'Enable SpamAssasin'. Click on it and wait for your system to set up the software automatically. A new page opens where details are presented to you and a message on the bottom informing you that SpamAssasin has been enabled for your account. Click the 'Go back' link to return to the main options.
Now, that you've got the software enabled the subject of all email messages that are marked as spam will include a prefix to help you understand that those messages have been identified as spam. For example if an unsolicited email message has the subject 'Hello this is a spam message please open it' then it will be detected and a prefix will be added. The subject will be transformed to something like this: '****_SPAM_****Hello this is a spam message please open it'. That way, when you open your mailbox to check your emails, you will know which messages have been identified as spam and delete them.
There's also an option to delete all the messages identified as spam and never deliver them to your account. Above the 'Enable SpamAssasin' button there's this phrase: 'To simply have the server DELETE and NOT deliver emails that are tagged as spam by SpamAssassin, click here now'. By clicking on this link you instruct the software to delete all messages that it identifies as spam. I do not recommend doing this immediately though. First, enable SpamAssasin and see what type of email messages you get, are identified as spam. If you receive tons of spam like me you will notice that the majority of spam messages are filtered successfully.
Another, alternative way to block all email messages marked as spam by SpamAssasin is with Email Filtering. Click on the 'Home' button in the upper right corner and click on 'Mail' again. Then click on 'Email filtering'. Here you can add filters to avoid certain email messages from arriving at your inbox. How the filters work is out of the scope of this article but click on 'Add filter' and you will be presented with the options to add a filter for the incoming email messages.
There are two drop down boxes and an edit box with which you specify the types of filters you want to add. There's also an edit box where you can specify the destination of the email that will be filtered. On the first drop down box choose 'SpamAssasin Spam Header' and on the second drop down box choose 'begins with', then on the filter edit box enter the word "Yes" without the quotes. Lastly, on the destination edit box enter the word "Discard" without the quotes. Then click on 'Activate' to enable the filter. What you've done is that you added a filter which allows SpamAssasin to filter all email messages that are marked as spam and discard them.
If you want to go even further you can try to configure the software yourself. We are supposed to be in the 'Email Filtering' section. Click on the 'Home' button in the upper right corner and click on 'Mail' again. Then click on the 'SpamAssasin' link. There's a button called 'Configure SpamAssasin', you will see it. Click on it and you will be presented with the main configuration. I will not go into details about the configuration but you can visit this website to learn more.
If you receive a lot of unsolicited email then SpamAssasin can help you get rid of most of them. It uses sophisticated algorithms to identify spam emails and mark them appropriately using patterns and scores. If it helped me then it can probably help you!
Mary Markell is a webmaster of DigitalStarProducts Human Edited Digital Products Marketplace. You can visit her marketplace to browse through the products or contact her at webmaster@digitalstarproducts.com.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mary_Markell
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