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, they will
show as "Not Set", and mail scanning will be performed as
per the default settings on the server. These settings only identify
potential spam and appropriately mark the e-mail. Viruses are deleted
but spam is delivered as normal.
Mail Scanning
Options
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.)
Other Options for Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express users.
- You may choose to filter spam using "Message Rules" under
the "Tools" menu in Outlook and Outlook express. This allows
each individual to choose what to do with spam received. Click
here for instructions.
Have questions about MailScanner?
We have a list of frequently asked questions. There is a good chance
your question is answered also. Click here to go to our Frequently
Asked Questions.