Cutting down on spam a little more...

Good morning all.

I’ve moved a number of clients over to my InterWorx server from an existing Ensim based host and almost all of them have noticed a significant increase in the number of spam messages that are getting through. What measures or modifications can I make in Interworx to help kill off a little more of the spam?

Thanks and Happy Holidays!

Phil Malmstrom
philm@diamondcomputer.com

I assume you have “Spam Filtering” (SpamAssassin) on?

If you go to:

System Services ===> Spam Filtering

There are tons of options, and even able to add custom options.

There are tons of spam blacklists, here is a good place to start:

http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Abuse/Spam/Blacklists/

Thanks,
Clint

Hi Clint.

Actually, yes I’ve got the spamassassin up to the new version and have set all the appropriate filtering options that the panel offers. What I’m looking for is what additional Custom Option settings and/or configuration changes have worked best for others to help curb the spammers. As you said, there are a ton of configuration options and I was looking for feedback from others as to what they’ve found that helps.

Thanks.

Phil Malmstrom
philm@diamondcomputer.com

One thing I’ve found useful was to tweak some of the default scores. I set this on my personal SiteWorx account, and it took care of quite a few messages:

score BAYES_99 8

I can’t remember what the default score for BAYES_99 is (99% sure the email is spam), but I want to say somewhere around 2.

Also, have your email users had time to train their spam? The bayesian filtering doesn’t kick in until after they have trained 200 spam and 200 ham.

Socheat

Good morning Socheat.

I’ll try that setting and see if it helps. Thanks.

As for the Bayes training, most of the users don’t want to be bothered going through the webmail interface and training the filters. They were used to a high degree of filtration with the Ensim box and are balking a little at having to do a bunch of work to get the same results. Gotta love users…

One more question, in the Ensim box there was a setting to just delete the spam on the server side. Is there a way to do that on Interworx? I know it’s not usually a great idea, but I have some users that would very much prefer that.

Thanks again and take care!

Phil Malmstrom
philm@diamondcomputer.com

http://www.rulesemporium.com/rules.htm

Should be enough rules to keep you busy for awhile :wink:

Thanks,
Clint

Additional Rules…

Hi again.

Ok, I’ve looked into additional rule sets for SA. This may be a question for the Interworx guys, but is there any problem with adding new .cf files to the panel? I know Ensim used to throw a fit if you messed with the configuration “under the hood”…

Thanks for everyone’s help and I hope you all had a great Holiday!

Phil Malmstrom
philm@diamondcomputer.com

I added another config file I created in the /etc directory for SA (for those damn german email things, remember those :rolleyes: ). It worked fine. Iworx is very good at letting you do stuff in SSH or NodeWorx.

Ok, I’ve looked into additional rule sets for SA. This may be a question for the Interworx guys, but is there any problem with adding new .cf files to the panel? I know Ensim used to throw a fit if you messed with the configuration “under the hood”…

For the most part you should be fine. IWorx-CP “touches” SA via a mysql db only so while you may alter/break some of the options that iworx-cp provides it won’t complain.

Chris

Hi Chris and Thanks for the reply.

One more question on the same thread. I noticed there’s an option to make the Bayes database global across the sites and in my case that may be a good option. If I change it, does it start with an empty database or consolidate the existing bayes data into it?

Thanks again and take care.

Phil Malmstrom
[SIZE=1]philm@diamondcomputer.com[/SIZE]

Good question Phil and I don’t know off the top of my head. Whatever SA’s default behavior is for this is what happens and I’d assume it consolidates.

Chris

bayes_99

Hi

To put these settings in can you confirm the preference is “score BAYES_99” and the value is “8”