Apache SpamAssassin is a tool which filters spam messages that go in your mailbox, based on spam characteristics. If the score of the incoming message is higher than the value you have determined (by default, the score set in SpamAssassin is 5), the tool will “tell” the mail server to delete the message.
If your hosting provider uses Apache SpamAssassin, you can find the tool in your control panel (such as cPanel). To start using Apache SpamAssassin, log in your cPanel and navigate to SpamAssassin icon:
To enable is, simply click the button on the following page:
After you enable Apache SpamAssassin you can set a score based on which the tool will filter incoming messages. The score can be any number between 1 and 10. The bigger threshold value you set, the fewer messages will be filtered. The lower the score number is, the more tough SpamAssassin will be on the emails. The default score is 5 and if you are not familiar with spam scores, we recommend that you leave it at this value.
You can also set SpamAssassin to automatically delete messages that have the determined score or higher. For example, for the default threshold of 5, all messages, which score 5 or higher will be deleted automatically.
NB: Keep in mind that sometimes the tool might flag valid messages as spam. The auto delete option might delete some of those valid emails.
You can also use Apache SpamAssassin to block certain email addresses, which are not caught by the overall score. In order to do that, type in a certain email address test@domain.com or all emails coming from a particular domain, by entering *.domain.com.
You can also whitelist emails, which you don’t want SpamAssassin to stop:
If you wish to know more about spam and spam prevention, check some of our other articles.
