Email filtering options can be configure per domain via the Control Panel page Domain Settings. The Domain Settings page gives you access to modify our entire range of SpamStopsHere's filters and services to better fit your spam, virus and malware blocking needs. More information over our filters and services options shown in the article.
To see the list of filters and options available for your domain:
Here you will see a list of the filter and other settings available for the selected domain.
Many of our filters have configurable actions, such as modify subject, forward to, etc. These can all be set to your preference and updated at anytime. For more information over these settings please visit our Filter Options Article
With a Mailbox List you can configure it so you only accept email for valid email addresses and instantly reject invalid recipients. This will greatly reduces the load on your server by letting us reject messages to invalid recipients before they are even filtered.
Configure your mailbox list and mailbox list spam filtering settings with the Mailboxes setting.
There are two options related to your Mailbox list:
The default setting Accept e-mail for any mailbox allows any mailbox (example@yourdomain) to be filtered and then sent to your mail server. This setting can be changed at any time to Only accept mail for the mailboxes listed below which will only accept emails listed on your mailbox list.
There are two options related to your mailbox list spam filtering:
The default setting Spam filtering ON by default for all mailboxes makes sure all mailboxes listed or not have spam filtering activated. Even with this setting on you may turn filtering off for individual mailboxes via your mailbox list. By changing this setting to Spam filtering OFF by default for all mailboxes all mailboxes spam filtering will be set to off unless specified differently in your mailbox list.
When editing, adding or uploading a mailbox list there is a format that needs to be followed:
Mailbox;Options
The mailbox is the user and the options is the filter option you want to set for that user.
For an example, a mailbox list would look like this:
moe;0 larry;0 curly;4
A domains mailbox list can be added to manually by clicking Add New Mailboxes or you can use the Upload Mailbox List to upload a complete mailbox list via a text file in the format shown above.
Some mail servers allow the use of sub-addressing with +tag qualifiers. For example, moe+newsletters@example.com. If you use this type of sub-addressing, you may use a +* wildcard entry in the mailbox list above. For example, if you would like to accept moe@ as well as any sub-address for moe, enter both "moe" and "moe+*" in the mailbox list.
Each option is indicated by a number:
Use Default: 0, Spam Filtering On: 1,Spam Filtering Off: 2, Reject address: 4, Disable Anti-Virus If Available: 8, Disable Spam & Anit-Virus Filtering: 10.
You may have noticed spam want you to click on a URL or call a phone number. This is why SpamStopsHere maintains a large database of these URLs (web and IP addresses) and phone numbers found in the body of recent spam. URL / Phone # Filtering is the first level of filtering performed.
We suggest deleting (fully blocking) these filtered messages. The default settings is Reject (Sender will be notified) (Recommended). If you would like to change these settings please refer to our Filter Options Article for more information over the different settings.
The content filtering used by Spamstopshere is based on long, distinct phrases found in recent, often offensive, spam. It is extremely unlikely to block legitimate email.
Examples of our content filtering:
We suggest using it in conjunction with the URL/Phone# filtering. Filtered email can be forwarded to a "spam" mailbox. If "Rejected", the sender will be notified that the email was blocked. These options can be configured by going to:
We suggest deleting (fully blocking) these filtered messages. The default settings is Reject (Sender will be notified) (Recommended). If you would like to change these settings please refer to our Filter Options Article for more information over the different settings.
The Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an open standard to help fight sender address forgery. Forging the sender address is a common technique used by spammers to avoid delivery notifications and by defrauders to impersonate trusted senders for phishing scams.
SPF allows domain owners to publicize a list of servers authorized to send e-mail for that domain. This information can be used to determine if an e-mail message has a forged sender address.
The message action set will be taken when the following are true:
The default message actions is Continue Filtering E-mail (Recommended with Modify Subject enabled), to change the message actions:
If you would like to change these settings please refer to our Filter Options Article for more information over the different settings.
When an anti-spam filter identifies a message, the filter action removes the message from the filter chain, preventing further processing. Because this isn't an anti-spam filter, the action of "Continue Filtering E-mail" is available, which continues processing the message through the remaining anti-spam filters in the chain. For this filter, "Modify Subject" doesn't end the filter chain and can be used together with "Continue Filtering E-Mail".
SPF Record validation can cause false positives, but they will likely be caused by configuration problems with the sending domain's SPF records or due to senders unknowingly violating the domain owner's sending policy. In general, SPF validation is a very sound method to validate a sender and can safely be used to reject forged e-mail, regardless of whether it would otherwise be identified as spam.
The Pattern Matching filtering detects HTML "tricks" which only spammers use.
It also blocks obvious porn, "Nigerian" and "Ebay" scams, and is updated as needed.
As it is extremely unlikely to block legitimate email; we suggest "Deleting" or "Rejecting" it.
The default message actions is Reject (Sender will be notified) (Recommended), to change the message actions:
If you would like to change these settings please refer to our Filter Options Article for more information over the different settings.
These additional filtering rules are based on common spammer methods and can reduce porn and other spam.
"Aggressive" options are not recommended, but may be suitable for small or family domains that want to block porn from minors. However they will block some legitimate emails, and should be reviewed.
Please refer to our Additional Filters article for more information over these filter options.
We suggest rejecting these filtered messages back to the sender. If any "Aggressive" options are set, we suggest reviewing the blocked emails, to change the message actions:
If you would like to change these settings please refer to our Filter Options Article for more information over the different settings.
Use this feature to configure the action taken after the filtering of email using the Spamstopshere maintained global Block List of email addresses and IP addresses. This list is for temporary annoyances where we find the best way to block them is by IP address or email address and they are annoying enough that we enable the filtering for all users.
The default message actions is Reject (Sender will be notified) (Recommended), to change the message actions:
If you would like to change these settings please refer to our Filter Options Article for more information over the different settings.
Country blocking identifies email sent from mail servers that are in the IP address space assigned to a specific country.
The Country Blocking is static. If a sender's email is coming from an IP address in a foreign country that you are subscribed to for the Country Blocking feature, the message will be identified by this filter. It doesn't matter whether the message is spam or not. However, if it may be coming from a country that is known for sending a lot of spam. If you only have contacts in the United States, it's possible that these messages are unwanted, but the email did not trigger any of our spam filters.
The default setting is to tag these messages with "[Foreign Sender]". The tag is informational only and it may help you to determine whether to look at the message. To change the message actions or set countries to block:
If you would like to change these settings please refer to our Filter Options Article for more information over the different settings.
Country | Zone# | Tagging |
---|---|---|
Argentina | 5 | Recommended unless you have clients there |
Brazil | 6 | Recommended unless you have clients there |
China | 7 | Highly recommended |
Japan | 8 | Optional (Due to many open relays in Japan) |
Korea | 9 | Highly recommended |
Nigeria | 10 | Recommended |
Russia | 11 | Recommended unless you have clients there |
Singapore | 12 | Recommended |
Taiwan | 13 | Highly recommended |
Thailand | 14 | Recommended |
Malaysia | 24 | Recommended |
Hong Kong | 25 | Recommended |
This service optionally uses several popular "Real-time Block Lists" (RBLs) of mail server IP addresses known for spamming.
To change the message actions:
The third party Real-Time Block Lists are maintained by third parties. These Block Lists are of IP addresses that were reported to have sent spam to their users. If a sender's email is coming from an IP address on one of the Block Lists that you are subscribed to, the message will be identified by this filter.
We don't maintain these Block Lists, and you will want to contact the list maintainer in order to determine why one of your senders was listed. The status of an IP address being listed does change, and it doesn't require any changes on your end to get more of your legitimate or spam email identified by this filter from one day to the next. It just depends on who you receive email from, and whether they're listed in the real-time Block List that day. It's possible that these messages are unwanted, but the email did not trigger any of our spam filters.
Many organizations get listed in a real-time Block List because a workstation on their network is sending spam. This can be the result of a virus infection, or simply a malicious spamming user, or unsound mailing list policies. Many ISPs such as AOL or Comcast could also have their email servers listed temporarily for the same reason, causing all email from that ISP to be tagged for awhile.
The default setting is to tag these messages with "[Block-Listed Sender]". The tag is informational only and it may help you to determine whether to look at the message.
These filters typically will only identify less than 1% of your email. If you don't find these tags useful, you can disable them by unsubscribing from these filters in the Spamstopshere Control Panel. Note that many anti-spam products only use these types of IP address based filters, and it used to be common to block messages identified by them. Due to their inaccuracy, we don't recommend DELETING or REJECTING messages caught by these filters, so there is no need to QUARANTINE (Professional and Enterprise Edition) the messages either. These types of filters should simply be used to provide additional information about the source of the message.
You can find out more about the Block List by viewing the organization's web site.
Use this Allow List to unconditionally accept email from an IP or email address and Block List to block email from an IP or email address.
To change the message actions for Block List:
Please see our Allow List and Block List article for informations over this subject.
Attachment filters allow you to enforce policies against email attachments based on filename. Since wildcards are supported, it is trivial to enforce policies against files based on filename extension.
For more information on configuring this option: Attachment filtering and stripping and Filter Options Attachment and Anti-Virus Filtering
The advanced custom content filtering rules are for the unique situations that a power user may want to provide specific mail handling rules for.
This feature allows you to create custom, advanced string matching filtering rules based on parts of the message. The rules are checked against each email message in priority order until one matches or the last rule is processed.