Adjusting the BlueOnyx Spam Filter Print

All VIRTBIZ BlueOnyx hosting* features integrated spam and virus filtering for email accounts.  We are proud to incorporate the best-of-breed AV-Spam from Solarspeed.  While the default settings are often suitable to cut down a large amount of undesired email, it is occasionally necessary to make adjustments to the filtering settings in order to fine-tune your results.

Adjustments to the spam filter can be made from within the BlueOnyx control panel.  Site Administrators can modify settings for any of the users on the site.  Individual users can log in with their credentials (the same as their email username/password) in order to adjust their settings.

1. Log into your BlueOnyx control panel at http://www.YOUR-SITE-HERE.COM:444 (where YOUR-SITE-HERE.COM is replaced by your actual domain).
2. If you are logged in as a Site Administrator, click the edit icon next to the user you wish to make the changes for.
3. Click on the SPAM tab and you will find the following options that you may edit:

• SPAM subject identifier
  • SPAM messages will have the subject line changed to indicate that the email is SPAM. The default tag is ****SPAM(_SCORE_)**** and the (_SCORE_) is replaced automatically with the number that shows how high the message scored. You can choose an alternate subject modifier. Only alphanumerical characters (without spaces) are allowed.
• Required Score
  • SpamAssassin uses a scoring system to determine if an email is SPAM or not. After examination an email will have a SPAM score, which is positive for SPAM and negative (or very small) for good emails. Here you can define at which treshold emails are considered SPAM. The higher this value is, the less sensitive the filter reacts and the more SPAM will pass through it undetected. The recommended value is 5.00.
• Whitelist From
  • Whitelist is an area that may be used to flag all email from a particular sender as legitimate email.  All email from the complete or partial email addresses and domains listed here will never be tagged as SPAM.
  • Wildcards (*) are allowed.   Wildcards (for example, all addresses within a domain) should be entered in the format *@domain.com.
    • Bad Entry: domain.com
    • Good Entry: *@domain.com
    • Bad Entry: mail.domain.com
    • Good Entry: example-user@domain.com
• Blacklist From
  • Blacklist is just the opposite, and all email addresses or wildcards will be treated as spam.

In addition to the options listed above, there are options that pertain to the languages that are utilized in emails received by the server.  As our servers are located in the United States, and our users are primarily English-speaking, the filtering will tend to treat messages in languages other than English with a bit more suspicion. 

If you receive emails in Asian character sets (ie: Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc.) or in languages other than English (especially where accent marks or umlauts are used) please check the appropriate box.  This will relax some checks that may otherwise result in your emails being flagged as spam.

• SPAM Action
  The spam filter can take a variety of actions on messages that are flagged as spam.  You can choose the option that works best for you.
  
  • SPAM-Filter disabled:  Automatically sets the "Required Score" to 900.00, which renders the filtering inert.  Pretty much all emails will be delivered, regardless of their content.
  • Deliver, but mark as SPAM:  Default Action.  This is the safest option and the default.  All emails are delivered.  Emails that meet or exceed the "Required Score" will have their subject changed in accordance with the SPAM subject identifier field above to indicate they are flagged as spam.
  • Move to folder 'caughtspam':  Detected SPAM messages are moved to a separate IMAP email folder named "caughtspam".  This ensures that no emails are lost, but you will need to access the "caughtspam" IMAP folder in order to view messages that have been delivered there.
  • Delete SPAM on the server:  Detected SPAM is automatically deleted from the server as soon as it arrives.  Detected SPAM will not be delivered under any circumstance.   Please use this option with caution, since we are unable to retrieve or restore any emails that are automatically deleted.

When you are finished making changes, click the button.

* BlueOnyx hosting in this case refers to shared hosting / webhosting services.  Dedicated server and VPS customers should inquire with Support for spam filtering options.