Knowledgebase

Smiz uses a Bayesian spam filtering system called ASSP, the Anti-Spam SMTP Proxy or ASSP. It continually adapts itself to detect new spam. For the most part it does a good job, but occasionally a spam slips through. The most important part of using the spam filter is to train it. You can train the spam filter to recognize spam by forwarding spam messages to one of the ASSP email addresses. So here's how you use it.

When you receive a spam, you have a choice to either just delete it and move on, or report it to the spam filter to help improve its performance. To report the spam select the message in your inbox and select to "Forward as attachment". Most mail software supports "Forward as attachment". For webmail and other email clients do not you can simply forward the spam. Address it to assp-spam@mydomain.com and click send. See "Reporting Emails" below for more about reporting emails to the spam filter.

We also suggest you turn using the "spam box" feature. By default it is turned on for all accounts.  To enable/disable the Spam Box feature login to your cPanel control panel (must be the administrator of the hosting account), under mail select "SPAM ASSP". At the top of the page click "Spambox" and follow the instructions to enable. There are 2 types of spam box filters, POP and IMAP.

The IMAP Spambox feature will place any emails it is unsure about in an IMAP folder named "spambox". Each user will be able to review and retrieve false positives and report them as spam, not spam, whitelist or blacklist them. You do not have to delete emails from the spambox folder. Once a day the spam filter purges any emails older than 7 days.

The POP Spambox requires an email account setup for all suspicious messages to be forwarded to. You can use webmail or an email client to view suspicious messages held in this email account.

So which Spambox do I use? Smiz turns the IMAP Spambox on by default. The IMAP Spambox allows each email user to review and report their own suspicious spam. The POP Spambox takes all of the suspicious spam for all email accounts on a domain name and lumps them all together. If you're a single user with many email accounts this may be better for you. If you are an office manager with many people using many email accounts, you may not want to be the person in charge of fishing out false positives for everyone else.

To view the IMAP spam folder some mail programs require you to subscribe to the spambox folder. Webmail also requires you to subscribe to the spambox folder in order to view it. Horde, SquirrelMail and RoundCube allow you to subscribe to IMAP folders from their settings menu. Any standard mail program such as Outlook, Entourage, Mac Mail and most mobile devices such as iPhones and Blackberry support IMAP. Please refer to the specific instructions of your mail program for details on how to use IMAP or read this article for more information. http://www.smiz.biz/cs/knowledgebase.php?action=displayarticle&catid=1&id=1

NOTE: If you try to subscribe to the spambox folder and it's not there, it has not been created yet. New email accounts do not have spambox folders until they recieve an email that ASSP is unsure about**.

** You should use the spambox to review and report false positives (legitimate email). You do not have to report messages as spam if they are in your Spambox, as they are already considered suspicious.

A few final points on using the spam filter.

1) Anyone you email is automatically whitelisted and will never have a message blocked. So if you are expecting an email from someone new, you can send them an email first and they will be automatically whitelisted.
2) Never email a spammer -- you validate your address to them and will only encourage them to spam you more.
3) Don't forward spam to other people -- it makes the spam filter think we like it.
4) Report spam that gets by and lands in your inbox by forwarding it to the assp-spam@mydomain.com address.
5) The spam filter keeps track of mail we send and spam we receive -- if an incoming message is not from someone we've emailed and it's more like the mail we send than the spam we receive then it gets through. Otherwise it's blocked and the sender gets the message, "Mail appears to be unsolicited -- report errors to postmaster@smiz.biz"
6) If you become aware that mail you want is being blocked, send the sender an email so their mail isn't blocked any more.
7) The spam filter learns over time. It will become more accurate the more you use it.

Reporting Emails

The Email Interface allows you to improve the bayesian filters, whitelist, and redlist using standard email programs. The interface uses special email addresses that when received, are processed by the spam server to help train it.

The email addresses to use are listed below.

assp-spam@yourdomain.com -- to report spam that got through
assp-notspam@yourdomain.com -- to report miscategorized spam
assp-white@yourdomain.com -- for WhiteList additions
assp-notwhite@yourdomain.com -- for WhiteList Removals
assp-red@yourdomain.com -- for RedList additions
assp-notred@yourdomain.com -- for RedList Removals

Examples: Assuming that your local-domain is mydomain.com

To add addresses to the whitelist, create a message to assp-white@mydomain.com
You can either put the addresses in the body of the message, or as recipients of the message
To report spam that got through, simply forward the message to assp-spam@mydomain.com
It's best to forward it as an attachment, but you can just forward it normally if you must.
In a short time you will receive a confirmation if confirmations are enabled.

Not Spam is used to report a False Positive, forward the message to assp-notspam@mydomain.com to report a suspicious email (in your spambox) as not spam.

Blacklist will ban the email address. Most spam comes from a unique address each time, this is useful certain spam always comes from the same address.

Whitelist is for emails that should never be blocked. Note that every person you send an email to is automatically whitelisted, you normally wont have to use this.

Redlist is for the occasional sneaky spammer that got themselves added to your whitelist. By redlisting an email they will be prevented from being re-added to the whitelist.

If you have any questions or problems with the Spam filter please feel free to contact technical support.

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