Accounting for about 75% of all emails sent in a given day, spam messages are responsible for the loss of countless hours of productivity. In small quantities, spam is merely annoying, but when mailboxes are flooded with dozens or even hundreds of unsolicited messages, spam decreases productivity. More than that, spam is potentially dangerous – junk mail is notorious as the predominant channel for the propagation of viruses, spyware, phishing schemes, and fraud.

We can’t stop using email, so what can we do to stop spam email from polluting our inboxes? In large companies and organizations, this task is handled by system administrators. If you own your website and use webmail for personal or business purposes, you will have to find a solution yourself. One of the best options is to use SpamAssassin, a dedicated anti-spam system that filters your email messages and automatically tags junk messages as spam. Read on to learn how to enable SpamAssassin on your webmail and how to configure it to get rid of spam.

SpamAssassin is the simple solution to a complex problem

SpamAssassin is an open source tool that is used in various environments, from personal use to large corporations. Because it is a free and efficient solution to a common problem, many hosting providers offer SpamAssassin integrated with the popular cPanel  administration suite. SpamAssassin is one of the most successful anti-spam utilities because it uses several tests to identify suspect messages and identify spam with a high level of accuracy.

If you would like to get premium spam filtering services, you should know that GlowHost now has the option of adding SpamExperts to your hosting solution. Having SpamExperts means that your email will be sanitized and over 99% of recognized incoming spam will be quarantined. There is even the benefit of added security! SpamExperts anti-virus protection helps prevent viruses from entering your systems as well. You can find more information and order it here.

Fighting spam is not easy. Hackers and fraudsters constantly modify their techniques to outsmart protection systems and deliver their messages to the inboxes of millions of Internet users. For this reason, effective anti-spam solutions need to use a combination of methods to assess the validity of a message and tag it as spam if necessary. SpamAssassin scores messages on a scale from 1 to 10, with higher values for suspect messages.

Here are the most important methods of identifying spam used by SpamAssassin:

• Header analysis – SpamAssassin reads the headers of the messages for clues about their authenticity.
• Body phrase matching – when certain words or phrases are found in the message, such as “drugs” or “Nigerian bank account,” SpamAssassin increases the spam-score of the message.
• Statistical analysis – SpamAssassin can be trained by marking regular mails as legitimate, and junk mail as spam. The application will analyze what these messages have in common and learn what messages are more likely to be spam.

Enable and configure SpamAssassin using cPanel 

To enable SpamAssassin on your webmail account, log in to cPanel and scroll to the Mail section and locate the SpamAssassin icon. After clicking the SpamAssassin icon, you will be taken to the SpamAssassin interface. Here you can enable SpamAssassin’s functions by clicking on the Enable SpamAssassin button placed at the top of the page. You will then receive a confirmation message.

On the lower side of the page, you have a few configuration options that let you adapt SpamAssassin to your needs. SpamAssassin lets you set the score for tagging a message as spam. The default score is 5, meaning that after a message fails 5 tests, it is marked as junk. If you want a more aggressive setting, one that will catch all spam but is likely to create more false positives, set a lower score. Conversely, for a less strict setting and less false positives, set the score higher to 8 or 9. You can experiment with the scores to see the best configuration for your needs.

SpamAssassin offers the option of using a Spam Box, a special folder to store all your junk mail. In the interface, you will see the Clear Spam Box button, which empties the spam folder when it’s full. If you choose not to use the Spam Box, the spam messages will simply be marked with the ***SPAM*** tag, so you can spot them easily.

To have SpamAssassin automatically delete all the messages that it considers spam, click on the Auto-Delete button. Use this feature with caution as there is a risk of losing legitimate mails that are incorrectly marked as junk by SpamAssassin (called false positives).

Finally, you can set blacklists to block all messages from certain senders or domains, such as @example.com. Similarly, if SpamAssassin repeatedly marks a legitimate sender as a spammer, you can place the address in the whitelist, which will stop SpamAssassin from tagging it as spam.

To get a feature packed hosting plan that includes cPanel and anti-spam protection from SpamAssassin, call 1-888-293-4678 or visit glowhost.com today.

Also, you can find more information about training SpamAssassin here.