Mailscanner

From A2Wiki

With the MailScanner service you can control what happens to spam and viruses by changing the configuration in your control panel. To access the MailScanner configuration options, login to your control panel account and click on "MailScanner Configuration".

On the main MailScanner configuration page, if you have only one domain in your control panel account you will see two main sections, Current Settings and Change Individual Domain Settings. If you have more than one domain, you will see an additional section entitled Change All Domain Settings. You can change all your domains to the same settings, or you can configure each domain individually.

Note: Until you change these settings for the first time, mail scanning will be performed as per the default settings on the server. In these settings all potential spam is deleted and viruses are deleted.

Mail Scanning Options

1. Spam Scanning - If you would like all your email for this domain scanned for spam, select yes. If you don't want your mail scanned for spam, select no.

2-3. Low Scoring and High Scoring Spam - MailScanner assigns a score to each email based on various attributes and triggers. The higher the score, the more likely the mail is to be spam. There are two levels of spam, low scoring and high scoring. High scoring spam is almost certainly spam, and low scoring spam is probably spam but it's possible to have false positives. You can also change the level of the low and high scoring spam; Normally low scoring spam must have a score of at least 5 but less than 20, and high scoring spam is email that has a score of at least 20. These score settings can be changed on a server wide basis by your hosting provider, and you can also change these scores for your own email (see Other Settings).

When MailScanner determines that an email is low or high scoring spam, you can configure whether this email is delivered as usual with a tag to let you know it is spam, deleted so you do not see it at all, or forwarded to a different email address which you can check on a regular basis.

If you choose to have the spam forwarded to an alternate email address you must create this email address in your control panel. You can either use the default "spam@yourdomain.com" or set up a different email address in Other Settings. If you forward spam to a different address you must make sure the address exists. If you forward to a nonexistent address the e-mail will back up in the server buffer and cause problems with the e-mail system.

4. Virus Scanning - If you would like all your email for this domain to be scanned for viruses, select yes. If you don't want your email scanned for viruses, select no.

5. Deliver Cleaned Emails - Most email viruses are sent by infected "zombie PCs" and have no valid content. If you want to receive notifications of each virus that was sent to you, select yes. If you do not want to receive these notifications, select no.

Blacklist and Whitelist Settings

1. Spam whitelist - You can add email addresses or domains to this list that you never want marked as spam. Please note that emails sent to you from these email addresses or domains will still be scanned for viruses and dangerous file attachments but they will not be marked as spam. Do not add your own domain to this list, as it will whitelist all emails sent TO your domain as well as FROM your domain.

2. Spam blacklist - You can add to this list any email addresses or domains that you want always marked as high scoring spam. The action you have specified for High Scoring Spam in the Mail scanning options will be applied to any emails sent from domains or addresses on this list (i.e. marked and delivered, deleted, or forwarded)..

Other Settings

1. Low scoring spam setting - You can change the level at which MailScanner will identify an email as low-scoring spam (probably spam) by changing this setting. If you change it to a higher number you may receive more spams that have not been identified as spam by MailScanner. If you change it to a lower number you may find that MailScanner is identifying non-spam emails as spam, i.e. there will be more false-positives.

2. High scoring spam setting - You can change the level at which MailScanner will identify an email as high scoring spam (almost certainly spam) by changing this setting. The default is 20 and this setting works well in most cases. If you find you are getting excessive amounts of low scoring spam with a score just below 20, you may want to change this setting to a lower number, such as 15. If you change it to a lower number we would recommend NOT setting high scoring spam to Delete until you've tested it for a while to be sure the new scoring is working well for you.

3. Additional email address - If you'd like to have spam forwarded to a different email address than "spam@yourdomain.com", for instance an email address on another domain, you can specify that email address here. It will then be listed as one of the options for Low and High Scoring Spam in the Mail Scanning Options so you can select it. (Avoid the temptation to send the e-mail to that old rival or enemy. This can only backfire and cause you serious trouble, including possible criminal charges.)

Frequently Asked Questions

• Will spam be deleted before I retrieve my email?

No email is deleted from your mailbox, unless you configure it to do so through the MailScanner Configuration Panel. Any email reported by the system as spam will have the subject line modified and header records added (tagged) to indicate them so that you can automatically filter them from your inbox and place them in a separate folder so that you can check them at a later time. You can configure MailScanner to delete email marked as Spam and/or Definitely Spam for you, but beware of the issues in the following answers to spam related questions.

• Should I tell you about incorrectly tagged spam?

Not unless it is an email from someone you regularly receive email from. The simplest thing to do would be to add them to your whitelist in the MailScanner Configuration Panel.

• Will all spam be detected?

No. All the email is scanned and assigned a score based on the likelihood that an email is spam. Thresholds (low scoring and high scoring spam) are used to determine whether an email should be tagged as spam: it is important that this is done to help avoid false-positives and false-negatives.

• Is all email tagged as spam, spam?

Not necessarily. The system is not foolproof and there will be instances where legitimate email is tagged as spam and where spam is not tagged as such. This is why all email is delivered by default, so you can filter them email in your email client and check through the spam to ensure there is no email that you actually need.

• I don't need (spam/virus) checking, can I only have email scanned for one?

Yes, you can configure the service to either scan for viruses, spam or both.

• Will viruses be deleted before I retrieve my email?

Yes, if you set Virus Scanning to yes in the MailScanner Front-end. All emails and file attachments will be scanned for viruses. If one is found, the virus is removed from the email before it is delivered to your mailbox, a text file attachment will be added to the email notifying you of the virus infection. Removed viruses and dangerous file attachments removed from email may be stored in a quarantine area on the server for 30 days. You can request the file from quarantine as described in the text file attachments, or , preferably ask the sender to resend the file in a zip archive.

• Will all viruses be detected?

No system can guarantee 100% detection, though nearly all infected files and dangerous file attachments should be detected using this service. The service scans all email received and sent through the server to help ensure that you do not accidentally start spreading a virus yourself.

• Do I still need a virus scanner on my computer?

Yes! Not only can the service not guarantee that all email viruses will be detected, there are many other ways that your computer can become infected. You should always install an anti-virus solution on every computer and ensure that it is constantly kept up to date.

• How do I know whether and email has a virus or is a spam?

There are two methods used to identify these emails to you. Firstly, the subject line of the affected email will be prefixed with one of the following:

   * {Disarmed} - indicates that the email contained html tags that are considered dangerous, e.g. iframe and form tags
   * {Virus?} - indicates that the email contained a virus and has had the attachment removed.
   * {Filename?} - indicates that the email contained a dangerous file attachment which has been removed.
   * {Fraud?} - indicates the e-mail may be fraudulent or designed to collect personal information from you.
   * {Spam?} - indicates that the email is likely to be spam - you should filter these emails into a separate folder in your email client.
   * {Definitely Spam?} - indicates that the email is almost definitely spam because it got a very high detection score - you should filter these emails into a separate folder in your email client.