All Cahaba Internet hosting accounts have the excellent MailScanner anti-spam solution available pre-installed and at no additional cost. Correctly configuring and utilizing MailScanner will significantly lessen unwanted email and help to restore some sense of sanity to your inbox.

Here’s an overview of the MailScanner system on Cahaba hosting accounts and how to make it work its magic.

First, to access the MailScanner option, log into your web-based Control panel. To do so, go to http://yourdomainname.com/cpanel (substituting your actual domain name for yourdomainname, of course.)

You’ll be required to provide your hosting account username and password. If you don’t have this information, just drop us an email or call Cahaba support at 205/970-0622.

Once you’ve correctly authenticated (remember that usernames and passwords are case-sensitive), you’ll arrive at the main page of your Control Panel.

The Control Panel provides a wide variety of information about your hosting account with Cahaba, and allows you to easily perform many useful operations … including complete management of all aspects of your email. Under the MAIL section, located on the right-hand side of the Control Panel, you’ll find icons representing various email categories, including one titled MailScanner Configuration. As the name implies, this is where you enable and configure the most imortand MailScanner anti-spam options.

Select the MailScanner Configuration option to begin.

If this is your first visit to the MailScanner Configuration section of your domain’s Control Panel, the screen will look something like this:

The top section, titled Current Settings, displays just what the heading indicates - your current level of MailScanner protection. The next section, Change Individual Domain Settings, shows what action is currently being taken by MailScanner. By default, spam and virus scanning is enabled, and both low scoring and high scoring spam is delivered. Each user can configure MailScanner to deliver, forward or delete low and high scoring spam.

A bit of information first about how MailScanner works.

Utilizing a continuously evolving set of algorhythms and rules, MailScanner looks at incoming (and possibly outgoing) mail and assigns a numeric value to each message. An email written in all capital letters might score higher than one written in normal sentence case, for example, and one which mentions prescription drugs in the subject may have a higher value too. Literally hundreds of different parameters are considered when MailScanner evaluates an email, and assigns a numbered score. Then, based on how you configure your individual MailScanner settings, certain actions will be taken to email messages which score above or below your low-scoring and high-scoring spam values.

The example above shows all the MailScanner settings at default values. To look at these values, or to change them, select the link, located near the top of this first screen, titled Other settings.

Selecting the Other settings link returns the following configuration screen:

The default example above shows a threshold of 4 for low scoring spam, and a value of 10 for high scoring spam. Remember from the first screen that MailScanner is, by default, configured to deliver all email. So, using this example, if an email scores below the low scoring spam value of 4, it will be delivered with no action taken by MailScanner. If an email scores in the low scoring spam range, between 4 and 10, it will also be delivered (by default) but with the following appended to the subject of the message: {Spam?} And if an email scores over 10, in the high scoring spam range, the subject will have this appended to the message subject: {Definitely Spam?} and it will be delivered as well.

Recommendations

My personal MailScanner settings are somewhat changed from the default values. Here’s how I have my system configured, and why.

First, based on years of experience, email which scores 10 or greater (the high-scoring default value) IS spam. Consequently, I don’t want that sludge getting anywhere near my email inbox, so I elect to have it deleted. I also don’t want low scoring spam being delivered to my regular mailbox, but I don’t want it deleted either. I’d rather send it to a spam mailbox which I can check regularly for any legitimate mail which might have been scored in the low scoring spam range.

These are what those changed values look like on the main MailScanner configuration screen:

In this example, it will be necessary to create a new spam mailbox. Doing so is easily accomplished by selecting the Email Accounts option from the main Control Panel screen.

Create a new spam email account using the Add a New Email Account wizard like this:

You can check this spam mailbox using your regular email client, or you can conveniently check this account from the web using the webmail interface available to all Cahaba hosting clients. To check your mail from the web, go to http://yourdomainname.com/webmail Then, enter your email username and password and select the webmail program you’d like to use. For all email accounts other than default, your username is your complete email address.

Blacklist and Whitelist

So you’ve customized your MailScanner system to delete your high scoring spam, and to deliver your low scoring spam to a spam mailbox, right? And you check your spam mailbox often for any legitimate mail that managed to sneak in there, right? But what do you do when you find wanted mail in the spam mailbox? Perhaps you have a friend who types in all-caps, or another who forwards jokes which have already been forwarded a dozen times or more. These are just a few of the email messages which might contain a MailScanner score that lands them in the low scoring spam category and a free trip to your spam mailbox. To insure that future messages sent from these senders will arrive in your regular mailbox, rather than the spam mailbox, you can add their email address to your MailScanner whitelist. Think of the cowboys who always wore white hats … they were the good guys. Similarly, mail addresses added to your email whitelist will always be delivered to your regular mailbox, regardless of the numerical value of the MailScanner scoring system.

To add an address to your whitelist, select the Email Black/Whitelist settings link from the first page of the MailScanner configuration screen.

The following screen will appear:

Add good addresses to the Spam Whitelist column, one per line, either *@domain.com to allow all mail from that domain, or name@domain.com to allow a single address. You may also add the sender’s IP address if you prefer. Conversely, add any addresses you wish to block to your Spam blacklist to guarantee that they will be marked as high scoring spam. Remember that spammers frequently spoof their return address, so blocking the sender’s address of a spam message may be ineffective.

Cahaba Internet support is always available to assist you with any MailScanner questions, so don’t hesitate to let us know if we might help. Oh, and don’t forget to never, EVER buy from spammers. Just say NO to spam!