Where can I adjust my Spamassassin settings?
What are the default settings for my account?
I am getting a lot of spam, what is happening?
What is a spam score?
What spam score threshold should I use for my account?
Why would I want to whitelist someone?
Why would I want to whitelist someone, couldn't I just raise my spam score threshold higher to let them through?
Why would I want to blacklist someone?
Why would I want to blacklist someone, couldn't I just lower my spam score threshold to block the email?
When I use tagging only, do I need to use the white/black lists?
How are messages marked?
How can I set my mail client to detect the Spamassassin headers?
What are some strategies to use for fighting spam with Spamassassin?
I have a domain hosted with Perigee, how does this affect me?
Where can I adjust my Spamassassin settings?
Just surf to: http://pop.perigee.net/spam and log on with your POP account username and password. From there you can completely customize
your spam settings for all of your email addresses.
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Perigee set your default spam setup to "Reject" email with a spam score of 7 or higher. This should stop most spam and block very little
legitimate email.
The operating modes for Spamassassin are:
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The most likely reason is that you are part of a domain which does not have spam filtering enabled. You
can tell by logging into http://pop.perigee.net/spam and
viewing the spam settings for your account.
What are the default settings for my account?
I am getting a lot of spam, what is happening?
| Look for an address with a "bluish" background like this text. |
If you see an address with a "bluish" background, then that address is part of a domain which is not part of our spam filtering service. You may want to request that your administrator enable this free service!
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The spam score is determined by applying thousands of rules to the email to determine its likelihood of being spam. Some rules subtract
from the overall score and some add to the overall score. In general, legitimate email has a negative or very low score. For detailed
information, you can go to: http://www.spamassassin.org.
The site below may also help you understand how Spamassassin works.
20 Ways Opt-in E-Mailers Can Outsmart Spam Filters
It was written by a publisher of a newsletter who was trying to take steps to make his newsletter look
less like spam! He worked with an older version of Spamassassin than we use here at Perigee and he wrote it
from the perspective of helping out a bulk mailer, but the information is still very valuable in understanding
how Spamassassin is doing its job.
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There is no one single answer to that question. You can adjust your threshold up and down and see what slips through to help make your
decision. Every email is marked to show its score and the rules used and you can look at the email's headers to see these results.
Experience shows that virtually NO legitimate email will have a score above 10 and virtually NO spam will have a score below 3. That does
leave a big transition region and why there is no single setup which works for every single person. Using the whitelist and blacklist
entries allows you to fine tune what email will reach your account.
When we set the default threshold setting to 7, we were erring on the side of caution, since it was a global setting. However, you
will still get some spam with that default setting. The normal default for Spamassassin is actually 5.
SO, IF YOU DON'T WANT TO GET ANY SPAM, WE WOULD RECOMMEND THAT YOU LOWER YOUR SPAM THRESHOLD TO 5 (or even 3 or 4). We would also
recommend setting the threshold for any pre-teen email account to an aggressive spam threshold of 3.
Remember, that each email is evaluated independently. Just because someone can't send you one particular email which looks like
spam, does *NOT* mean any other email they send you will get blocked.
This is important because it permits you to lower your threshold pretty aggressively. If an email gets blocked, the sender would
probably send you another email asking "what happened" and then you have the option of whitelisting their address. (if you want ;-))
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If you are part of a email mailing list or have friends who send you email that tends to look like spam, just add them to your whitelist.
You can even add entire domains to your list. Remember that as you lower your spam threshold, you'll decrease the amount of spam you get
and increase the number of addresses you would have to whitelist to allow all legitimate email through.
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If you keep your threshold to a reasonable number (e.g., 3 or higher), you shouldn't have to whitelist too many people. Raising your
threshold will increase the amount of spam you get, so don't do that just allow mail from one person or email list. Whitelisting
completely bypasses the spam checks so that mail will get through no matter what it contains.
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If someone is harassing you with email or a company won't quit sending you email when you ask them to stop, or for any reason you don't want
to receive email from someone, you can add them to your blacklist! Remember that as you raise your spam threshold, you'll increase the
amount of spam you get and the number of addresses you would have to blacklist to stop all spam. Exercise some caution,
blacklisting stops any email from that address!
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If you keep your threshold to a reasonable number (e.g., 9 or lower), you shouldn't have to blacklist too many people. Lowering your
threshold will stop more spam. but also could block legitimate email, so don't lower it just to block email from one person or one list.
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If an email is not rejected, several headers are added to the message. In addition, if you choose Tag only, you have the option of having
the Subject line marked with "**SPAM**". Obviously, when you pick "Reject" and it is determined to be spam, then there's no reason to add anything!
The two most useful headers added to the message are:
X-Spam-Flag:
With most mail readers, you can use X-Spam-Flag to determine if an e-mail is marked as spam. It will be
set to "YES" for e-mail that has exceeded the spam threshold level, and "NO" for e-mail that has not. Of course,
this only applies you have changed Spamassassin's mode to Tagging Only.
The X-Spam-Level header is related to the score that has been given to the e-mail. It will contain stars (*) equal to the score received,
rounded down. For instance, a score of 5.0 or 5.5 will result in the X-Spam-Level header being set to:
X-Spam-Level: *****
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There are a number of clients, and each is a little different. Also, you may want to identify spam based on the X-Spam-Flag or the
X-Spam-Level headers. Below are links to help you with each one:
Filtering spam using X-Spam-Flag in your email client
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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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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.
What is a spam score?
What spam score threshold should I use for my account?
Why would I want to whitelist someone's email address?
Why would I want to whitelist someone, couldn't I just raise my spam score threshold higher to let them through?
Why would I want to blacklist someone's email address?
Why would I want to blacklist someone, couldn't I just lower my spam score threshold to block the email?
When I use tagging only, do I need to use the white/black lists?
You might want to still blacklist certain people who are annoying you with their email.
Whitelisting doesn't accomplish anything except that the headers aren't added to their email. It would
be more interesting to be able to check headers and learn at what spam threshold level their
email would have been blocked.
How are messages marked?
X-Spam-Level:
How can I set my mail client to detect the Spamassassin headers?
Filtering spam using X-Spam-Level in your email client
What are some strategies to use for fighting spam with Spamassassin?
I have a domain hosted with Perigee, how does this affect me?