cPanel to Manage e-mail and Stop SPAM

SPAM is an unfortunate fact of life. You can reduce the amount of SPAM you receive by following the tips on this page. The cPanel web hosting software is easy to use, rich on features tool for managing all your Website needs.

One feature what is overlooked on cPanel web hosting software is the ability to manage your own e-mail accounts and handle unsolicited commercial e-mail, we call them SPAM.

And unfortunately, Unsolicited Commercial e-mails are getting worse as time goes on.

Now you know why I chose this subject, the Spam is a consequence of freedom, but everybody is seeking and tired of Spam.

Prevent your email addresses getting on SPAM lists

Never put your email address on your website. Automatic email address harvesters will find it and add it to SPAM mailing lists. You should hide it in some way, for example:
- Create an image showing your email address and put that on your web pages
- Use JavaScript to hide your address, e.g. using [[http://www.z-host.com/scripts/iscramble/][iScramble]]
Never reply to SPAM
Do not click on links in SPAM emails. This usually confirms that your email address is active and you'll get more SPAM.
Avoid "catch-all" email rules since these will be susceptable to generic (e.g. sales@yourdomain.com) or randomly generated email addresses.

You are the best manager of your e-mail accounts

Yes, it is true, you are the best manager!

You probably already have a couple of e-mails with free services as gmail, hotmail or through your ISP; if you have a WebSite you have an Internet Service Provider as well.

You might be wondering why you should get more e-mail accounts:

If you running your own business you need to offer a more polished appearance. If you communicate with customers via hotmail e-mail, you don't look professional
You need to have complete control of your account send automated e-mails, create/delete e-mail, forward e-mail from one domain to other domain and so one.
You can improve anti-spam feature using technologies cPanel offer to you(they depend on your web host)
Have many choices to access your e-mail: via any web browser, download e-mail to your PC, or both
You are limited by the disk space and features of your web hosting plan. This is why you must be careful when you chose your web host.
You can manage e-mail via cPanel and also keep at least one other e-mail that is not part of your domain for security
E-mail via cPanel has a lot of features but it is easy to learn, and use them

Let's talk about the e-mail features now.

cPanel e-mail features

I create all picture using my cPanel on my own host Hostgator, which is a very powerful host. The list of features can be a little different for other hosts.
Example: Fantastico which is a great feature to create WorldPress blogs with a couple of clicks, is a utility that the host must buy separately, and not all the hosts want to buy it!

My intend was to list all the features but the picture is so clear you can just read them, and in the process you will start to be familiar with cPanel. I promise, it is a very short learning experience.

The names of icons are intuitive but I'll comment some of them.

If you want to create or manage an existing email account, click on e-mail accounts (in other systems it is an icon named "Manage/Add/Remove Accounts"), and fill in info on the top part of the screen:

If you want to manage an existing email account click in one of the left functions in the bottom of above screen where all your emails accounts are listed.

SpamAssassin

The purpose of this lens is to show you that cPanel has a software to protect you against SPAM. There are a lot of packages that do just that but sometime you must pay fancy fees to get a package.

SpamAssassin is an automated email filtering system that attempts to identify spam messages based on the content of the email's headers and body.
SpamAssassin:

blocks known spamers
rewrite the headers of other e-mal msg. so you can filter them out

SpamBox will deliver any emails identified as spam by SpamAssassin into a separate mail folder named "spam". This "spam" folder will fill up and should be emptied regularly. I keep Spambox disable
Click the Enable SpamAssassin button to turn it on.
Click the Configure SpamAssassin to edit the rules.

To configure SpamAssassin you must fill in a form with the following info:
These 5 lines in the configuration ares are reserved for you to add e-mail addresses that you notice SA is not marking as spam, but you want to.
blacklist_from
blacklist_from
blacklist_from
blacklist_from
blacklist_from

Set the number of hits required before a mail is considered spam. "n.nn" can be an integer or a real number. 5.0 is the default setting, and is quite aggressive but you can change this to a higher number if you find that message that are not spam are always labeled as spam
required_score 5 (by default, the smaller number the higher restriction you get)

Text added to the Subject line of mails that are considered spam.
rewrite_header subject

Assign scores (the number of points for a hit) to a given test. Scores can be positive or negative real numbers or integers. If only one valid score is listed, then that score is always used for a test. If four valid scores are listed, then the score that is used depends on how SpamAssassin is being used.
Setting a rule's score to 0 will disable that rule from running.
score....
score...
score...
score...
score...

The last 5 lines are for whitelisted addresses. The meaning is that SA automaticaly marks them as spam but you feel should not be.
whitelist_from
whitelist_from
whitelist_from
whitelist_from
whitelist_from

At this point you can save.

If the SA is incorrectly labeling files, return to CPanel and edit The SpamAssassin settings and correct them.

Note: It is not easy to fill in this form and it is a good idea to call your host to help you with this info, usually they have a default setting and you must change only some specifics if you want to.

Choose files or drag and drop files

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