Spam is usually considered to be emails that are junk, unsolicited or irrelevant, typically to large numbers of users indiscriminately, for the purposes of advertising, phishing or spreading malware, to name a few.
Mail servers are charged with the difficult task of detecting and labelling these unwanted emails, and a difficult task it can be!
SpamAssassin, the anti-spam filter installed on the WebClick hosting platform, is software for analyzing email messages, determining how likely they are to be spam, and reporting its conclusions. It is a rule-based system that compares different parts of email messages with a large set of rules. Each rule adds or removes points from a message's spam score. A message with a high enough score is reported to be spam.
Spam Assassin doesn't natively block spam. Instead, it tags messages as probable spam by changing the Subject line and message headers. This is very wise: no automated system can recognize spam with 100% certainty -- deciding "what is spam" is a judgment call. All automated spam filters will produce some false positives (wanted e-mail mistakenly tagged as spam) and false negatives (spam not identified as such).
It is important to note that detecting spam is not a hard and fast science and requires constant work to ensure that your inbox remains junk free. It is likely that you will be required to take action such as adjusting the spam filter threshold, updating blacklists with email addresses regularly sending you unwanted email or setting up your email account in a way that will help it train the mail server.
If you are concerned by the level of spam that you are receiving, feel to get in contact with us for assistance and advice with lowering your spam filter threshold. Otherwise, if this was mostly a once off or you only receive a few of them per day, there's probably not much to be gained from adjusting your spam filter settings due to the risk of legitimate emails being caught. If you do get in contact with us, we will need you to extract information from these emails to help us determine what level your filter could be safely increased to. See this KnowledgeBase article: information about retrieving message headers.
"Why did this spam email make it through your filter? It is clearly spam!"
This is one of the most commonly asked questions here at the WebClick Support Desk. And it is usually one that we are unable to answer to our clients satisfaction (if we're going to be totally honest with you, as much as it pains us to admit it).
In each WebClick hosting account, 7.0 is the default, minimum anti-spam score that needs to be achieved per email that is sent to your email account (unless it has been adjusted by either you, or our support team during a spam investigation). This threshold can be set lower (or higher) depending on your particular needs and preferences, however this does significantly increase the risk that false positives will occur.
For example, using capitals in the email body for more than 50-75% of the content can earn you as much as whole point to a point and a half on the test. Sending from an email address that ends in a digit (eg, email01@domain.com) can earn you up to half a point. And if the email is sent via a poorly coded contact form on your website, the email could earn up to three or four points very quickly. Combine that with a few other triggers & a low threshold and suddenly most of the emails you receive have the potential to be marked as spam.
Flags a spam filter cannot look for
Geographic location: Yes, it's true that most of the spam you receive is probably generated from overseas. However, it is a definitive truth that the internet has shrunk the world. It is now incredibly common to have a website developed in the Philippines that is hosted in the United States, South America or Eastern Europe. Banning all incoming mail from overseas is just simply not an accurate flag for detecting whether an email is spam!
Email Address: Most spammers will change their email address on a regular basis, or simply make a spoof of a fake email address or even your own email address (so that it looks like you are sending yourself spam!). If you have received the same spam email from the same sending email, consider yourself lucky! Your email hosting settings includes a blacklist, which you can update yourself. If you are constantly getting emails from the same email, make use of your blacklist by logging into the control panel and adding the email address to the blacklist and enjoy the peace and quiet in your inbox. Otherwise, there is really no way to examine all the email addresses in the world to determine whether it is legitimate or not.
Foreign Language: Your email cannot be filtered based on whether the email is written in English or not. Australia is delightfully multicultural - your German neighbours may not appreciate not being able to receive their annual Christmas family photo from their relatives still living in Germany!
What steps can you take to minimise spam
Use IMAP: IMAP is a mail protocol. By setting your email account up as IMAP in your mail program, you can train the spam filter in your hosting account to recognise the patterns in the emails you mark as junk mail, which will help it determine what you are likely to consider spam.
Decrease the anti-spam filter threshold: Setting the required spam score lower through your hosting account will catch more spam. However, be careful, as it may start catching more legitimate emails.
Don't respond to suspected spam emails: Replying to a spam email, even to ask them to unsubscribe you, sends the message straight to the spammers that they caught a real-life, in-use address. Success for them! Unfortunately, being polite and requesting they stop sending you emails will not work in this case!
Update your account blacklist: Each email account in your hosting account has a blacklist attached to it. If you receive multiple email items from a common email address, add it to your blacklist to stop it reaching your inbox althogther.
