Spam is the scourge of the internet and is only going to get worse rather than better. If you ever buy something from a spam email not only are you contributing the the problem but you are likely to get ripped off and you are also putting your computer at risk of being infected with malware. Don't do it, don't reward the spammers.
One of the best ways to get loads of spam is to put your email address anywhere on your website. We get spam addressed to email addresses that have only ever been used on a website, so it is obvious where they got it. Instead of publishing your email address, use a contact form. If you aren't sure how to do it, we can build one for you for a reasonable cost.
At 123host we do filtering of incoming email. We also let gmail do our spam filtering. We receive about 300 spam per day (no kidding) and very few get missed. On the other hand we do check the spam box regularly as about 1 genuine email per week gets classified as spam. If you use gmail or a similar web mail service, you likely don't have a problem with spam, for the rest of you...
Here's how to enable Spam Assassin and reduce the amount of spam you see.
Log into your domain management panel: cpanel.123host.com.au
Your login details are in the welcome email you should have received. If you can't find it, lodge a support ticket and it will be resent
Don't be intimidated by all the offerings in cpanel, it can be overwhelming. Also be careful; you could break the internet...well, maybe just your website...no kidding.
You are looking for the mail section and Spam Assassin
This will take you to the setup page.
To get going at the most basic level do this;
- Click to enable Spam Assassin
- I recommend that you disable auto delete. This setting deletes everything detected as spam. Unfortunately spam filters are not perfect, you may miss some emails that are marked spam but are legit (false positives). Detected spam will have SPAM inserted at the beginning of the subject, so it is easy to filter it and check for false positives.
- Enable the spam box. This is part of keeping an eye on things. At least once a week you should have a look in there and see if there are any false positives - emails wrongly identified as spam
- You can fine tune Spam Assassin.
There's a lot more on the configure page but this is the most valuable bit. If someone you want to get email from is consistently categorised as spam, white-list them (the opposite of black-listing).
Use an individual address or an asterisk * is a wild card, so *@123host.com.au means "accept any emails from 123host.com.au
Don't forget to save your work.
If you use Spam Assassin I am interested in hearing your results so I can share with others. Drop me a note
Need more help? Want a recipe for Spam? Lodge a support ticket
