How does Spam Assassin work?

Q. How does Spam Assassin work?

SpamAssassin is a mail filter used to identify Spam. It uses a number of tests to determine if a piece of email is legitimate or Spam. If it is determined to be Spam, it can either sorted to a separate mail folder for further analysis, thrown away, or delivered back to your inbox marked as Spam. There are also a number of ways you can fine tune your filtering to make sure legitimate email is let through and email that you don't want gets blocked.

One way Spam Assassin determines Spam is by Hits. Hits are a point scale used to determine if a piece of mail is legitimate or not. For example, if a message mentions something about "viagra" it will get a point. If it written in all CAPS it may get another point. If the amount of combined points a message gets reaches or exceeds the point threshold, it gets marked as Spam.

Email addresses that you know would never send you spam can be placed in a "whitelist" to ensure they are always allowed through. Email addresses or domains that always send you messages you do not want to receive can be placed on a "blacklist" and will always be treated as Spam.

http://download1.swsoft.com/Plesk/Plesk8.0/Doc/plesk-8-email-users-guide.pdf has a very comprehensive part on pages 15-19 of how you can reduce the amount of Spam.

For more information on Spam Assassin, check out their web site at http://spamassassin.org/

To access an individual email account and configure it accordingly, please open and log into the Email Control Panel from our Support page.

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