If you need an effective way to filter email spam, you can do this using the built-in Spam Assassin tool in cPanel. In this tutorial, we’ll take you through the setup and configuration processes.
To enable Apache Spam Assassin, follow the next steps:
1. Log in to your cPanel.
2. Scroll to the Email section and click on the Spam Filters icon.
3. When the Spam Assassin page opens, click the toggle button next to Process New Email and Mark them as Spam. When the button turns blue, spam filtering is enabled.
4. Enabling Spam Assassins filters out suspected emails and places them in a separate spam folder in your inbox. If you’d prefer not to do this, you’ll activate auto-delete, which will automatically delete suspected spam emails.
Remember, some genuine emails could also be suspected of being spam. If you enable auto-delete, these will be deleted too.
5. If you want to go ahead with enabling auto-delete, click the toggle button next to Automatically Delete New Spam (Auto-Delete). When the button turns blue, auto-delete is enabled.
Configuring Spam Filtering
Besides enabling and disabling spam filtering, you’ll also configure Spam Assassin by changing the spam threshold or adding addresses to whitelists and blacklists.
Changing the spam threshold
Email messages are scanned on arrival and given a score out of 10 based on the likelihood of them being spam. Spam Assassin’s default spam threshold score is 5, so any message scoring a 5 or higher will be sent to the Spam folder. If you find too few or too many emails are being filtered, you’ll adjust the threshold score. To do this:
1. Go back to the method New Emails and Mark Them As Spam section and click on the blue Spam Threshold Score link.
2. When the new page opens, click on the dropdown options box and choose the new threshold score you desire. The lower the number, the more aggressive the spam filtering will be.
3. Once you’ve made your decision, click the blue Update Scoring Options button to complete the method and save your changes then click on Return to overview.
Additionally, you can also enter emails in the whitelist and blacklist to make sure emails you want to receive don’t get blocked and that those you want blocking don’t get through. To do this:
1. Scroll down to Additional Configurations (For Advanced Users).
2. Click on the Show Advanced Configurations link.
3. Click on either the Edit Spam Whitelist or Edit Spam Blacklist settings link.
4. When the page opens, click the Add New Whitelist/Blacklist Item link.
5. Type in the name of the email address you would like to whitelist or blacklist in the input field and click the blue Update button.
6. If you want to receive or block messages from a selected domain, instead of an individual address, you can do this by typing *@nameofdomain.com.
7. You can return to these pages to remove items from the lists if you want.
For more help with cPanel, visit the cPanel Section of our knowledge base.
