What are some strategies to use for fighting spam with Spamassassin?
There are a number of ways you can use this new spam fighting capability. Here are three
different scenarios for you to consider in adapting Spamassassin for your account.
Example Configuration 1 - Just Use the Defaults and whitelist/blacklist addresses
If you do not take any action, Perigee will block spam with a spam score of 7 or higher.
You CAN ALWAYS add whitelist or blacklist entries for your email addresses to get around ANY problems
you might run into with this configuration. You can even whitelist or blacklist ENTIRE domains! Note
that you may want to use the X-Spam-Level header discussed below
to quarantine email on your email client even if you don't change the default threshold of 7. For example,
you might want to use X-Spam-Level to quarantine email with score of 5.0 to 6.9 by following the example
in the instructions to detect Spamassassin headers. Click for instructions.
Example Configuration 2 - Rejection plus spam score header
Reject at a higher level (e.g., 10). This would be so you could eliminate the blocking of legitimate email.
If you do increase your spam threshold, you could still keep the spam out of your inbox by using
the header: X-Spam-Level: to quarantine possible junk email into a junk mail folder. For example,
you might want to use X-Spam-Level to quarantine email with score of 5.0 to 9.9 (assuming you reject at 10)
by following the example in the instructions to detect Spamassassin headers.
This is good in that it blocks most all of the gross spam (illegal stuff, pornography), and
should never block any legitimate email. Since it will let some spam in though, you can use
the X-Spam-Level header to quarantine email with a spam score above some level.
For example, if you decide to "Reject" at a spam Threshold of "10", then you could add a rule
using X-Spam-Level to move email with a score between 5 and 9.9 to the junk folder by adding
a rule matching the following header:
X-Spam-Level: *****
and having the action be to move the email to the junk folder.
Click for instructions
This is a pretty good compromise, but does require a little work on your part to create the rule
and look through your junk mail folder for legitimate email. One final note, as always, use
the whitelist to handle the email from anybody who insists on sending you email that looks a lot like spam!
Example Configuration 3 - Tagging plus spam status header
If you change the default action to tagging and set the threshold low (e.g., 3, 4 or 5), you can use a header to separate spam in the mail
client. This allows ALL spam through, but with the proper rule in your mail client, you can quarantine spam with the header:
X-Spam-Status: Yes
This would require a good bit of work on your user's part since they would have to create the rule and then check their junk mail folder for
legitimate email. The amount of legitimate email that would be quarantined would depend on the spam threshold you set for your account. If
you set it too low, a good bit of email will be moved into the "junk mail" folder. This option is not recommended, but it is good to have
if you are concerned about missing ANY email.
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I have a domain hosted with Perigee, how does this affect me?
All settings which can be made to an individual email address, can also be made to a domain. The way our system
interprets settings for a domain is to use that as the default for all addresses within that domain. This
overrides the Perigee.net defaults of Reject at a spam threshold of 7.
In order to make changes to a domain, you must log in with the username and password for the owner of the domain.
You can also set up your whitelists and blacklists for your whole domain by adding them to the domain settings
just like you would for an email address. A user with an account on our system and an address within your
domain, can override these default settings for that address just like they can override the Perigee.net defaults.
