New Webmail Features

From HostBaby Wiki

May 5th, 2010

A few new features have been added to the current webmail as of today, namely:

"SPAM" folder

This was a feature we've had on our other servers for quite some time, but haven't found a good way to recreate it on our brand new systems. It's not perfect yet, but it's finally working.

In short, the webmail will automatically create a new folder for you called "SPAM", then any email you receive tagged as ****SPAM**** by our system will be automatically filtered into this folder (so they don't clog up your Inbox).

We recommend at least skimming through this folder every once in a while to make sure no "real" mails were accidentally tagged as SPAM. If you find one (a "false-positive"), you can safely open up the mail to view the original, then click "Whitelist Sender" to make sure all future mails from this person are never tagged/filtered.

If you'd like to automatically delete these mails in the SPAM folder after a time, go to Options -> Folder Preferences and set the number of days under "Auto-Prune SPAM folder"

Spam/Virus Quarantine

You may notice a new link at the top called "Quarantine", in here you will find any emails sent to you that our system deemed "too spammy" or included a known virus. This list differs from your SPAM folder in that we're almost positive you'll never see a false positive in here (assuming you stick with our default settings).

The mails are sorted by their "Spam Score" from lowest to highest. This means the least-obvious spams will be at the top of the list. Any viruses will probably also be at the top of the list, but they'll be red, so you'll know to ignore them.

If you see any emails in here that you believe is a false-positive (a non-spam mail mistakenly filtered as spam) and you'd like it delivered into your mailbox, simply click the checkbox next to the mail(s), select "Release" (or "Release + Add To Whitelist") from the Action list at the top left and click Submit.

Spam Assassin Settings

You can reach the new Spam Assassin Settings page from either the link on your Quarantine page, or by going to Options -> SpamAssassin Configuration

This page is split up into three parts:

Whitelist/Blacklist

Here you can create a list of email addresses you either never want filtered as spam (whitelist) or always want filtered as spam (blacklist). Many people may want to simply click the "Whitelist Everyone In Your Address Book" link.

To quickly whitelist someone when reading an email, there is now a "Whitelist Sender" link on the Options bar for each email.

Quarantine Settings

There's only one option here right now, with most likely more to follow. Here you can tell the system how many days worth of mails it should keep in your Spam/Virus quarantine.

Message Scoring Policy

This section is for people who want better control over how strict the spam filtering should be. For those used to old-style SpamAssassin settings, "Tag Level" is the same as "Required Score"

There are two "levels" of tagging/filtering: Tag and Quarantine. Any email scoring equal or greater to the Quarantine number will be quarantined by the system and not delivered to your mailbox. Meanwhile any mail scoring above the Tag Level will be tagged as ***SPAM*** and will be delivered to you. And, naturally, any mail scoring below the Tag Level comes in untouched.

To get a better idea of how spam scoring works, open any random email, click "View Full Header" and look for the "X-Spam-Status:" header. The two important numbers here are "score=XX.XX" and "required=XX.XX". The higher the score, the more likely the mail is a spam. If a mail scores above the required number, it gets tagged. In terms of the Settings page, here "required" is the same as "Tag Level".

Our system default is to tag emails scoring at or above 6.31 and to quarantine mails scoring at or above 10. Feel free to play with these settings as you see fit, just be careful to not set the numbers too low, otherwise you'll end up tagging or quarantining much of your legitimate email.

As always, if you have any questions about any of this, just let us know :)