How to Use SpamAssassin Effectively

When you get cPanel web hosting, you get access to a number of tools to help with your email accounts—see my previous post on cPanel Email Functions. One of the key tools you can access from cPanel is SpamAssassin. Everybody has to deal with Spam at some point, and Spam Assassin can help to reduce and prevent unnecessary emails from flooding your inboxes.

SpamAssassin is found under the Mail section of cPanel. When you launch the program, you’ll see the settings pages. By default, it is usually disable—so just click the button to enable SpamAssassin. Messages flagged as spam can either be automatically deleted or sent to a separate spam folder. In order to make sure an email is actually spam, SpamAssassin lets you specify the number of times a message “hits” before it is treated as spam—the default is 5. You can also disable the auto delete function if you wish.

You also have the ability to enable, disable, and clear the spam box or folder where spam emails are sent. The last button on the screen allows you to configure SpamAssassin. Here you can enter email addresses from messages that should be flagged as spam but have not been (blacklist_from) and addresses from mail that has been flagged but should not be (whitelist_from).

While SpamAssassin may not get rid of all your junk email or be the perfect solution, it can cut down the amount of spam you receive if you’re currently getting daily annoying messages. Since this tool is available in cPanel anyway, it’s worth a try.