As the years go by, the internet is becoming more and more complex, more and more users and devices are connected to it, more and more processes are being implemented over the internet and especially money transactions, bill payments and more.
The internet has become increasingly dangerous in recent years, especially for unsuspecting users, and one of the top forms of risk is email fraud.
We have all received emails either misleading, threatening, or just spam with email spamming and phishing taking huge proportions and unfortunately affecting everyone and with very bad consequences especially on the financial side.
Fighting spamming and protecting against it is a core goal of our company and we are constantly enriching our services with more and more security mechanisms. With this in mind we have added the MailScanner application to all of our hosting packages.
MailScanner is a server-side e-mail protection software that enables the user to filter and manage their emails and customize the spam settings of their account as they wish.
Among other things, it allows the user to control which emails they receive and reject, what to do with emails that are classified as spam (eg deletion, forwarding to other mails, etc.) and from which addresses they will receive or reject emails regardless of their content (whitelist / blacklist).
Managing MailScanner
To take advantage of MailScanner's capabilities you will need to follow these steps:- Log in to the cPanel of your hosting package.
- From the cPanel environment, locate the Email section and click on the Mail Scanner icon.
Overview and Mail Scanner settings management per domain.
The above procedure will take you to the MailScanner Admin and Overview Panel. There you can see a brief reference table with the MailScanner settings per domain.
In this table you can see and change how your domain handles various types of spam. Specifically, you can enable or disable (not recommended) the virus check, whether the virus-cleared emails will be delivered, and how your domain will handle the emails it receives depending on their Spam Score.Add / remove email account from Whitelist / Blacklist.
If you would like to receive / reject emails automatically from an address without checking for spam, then you can add the email address of interest to the Whitelist / Blacklist.
All emails coming from an address located in the Whitelist will be automatically received regardless of whether their Spam Score would make them spam or not.
Conversely, all emails coming from an address listed on Blacklist are automatically labeled as "High scoring spam" and are handled by following MailScanner's settings for the domain to which they were sent.
To add an email address to one of the MailScanner lists above (Whitelist / Blacklist) follow these steps:
- Log in to the cPanel of your hosting package..
- Locate the Email section and click on the MailScanner icon.
- Then click on the "Email Blacklist / Whitelist settings" button.
- On the page that appears you will find two boxes where you can specify the emails you want to Whitelist (left panel) or Blacklist (right panel).
Note: Emails can be in the form of *@example.com, name@example.com and *@*.com or in IP format (eg 192.168.2.1). You can enter one email / IP address in each line with a maximum of 30 addresses.
- Once you've added the emails you want, click on the "Change" button located below the boxes.
Modifying Low scoring / High scoring spam thresholds and other settings.
When receiving a spam, depending on its Spam Score, it is classified as a Low scoring spam (usually non-malicious spam) or a High scoring spam (usually malicious, infected spam).
The above procedure is done with the use of spam thresholds which, when exceeded by an email's score, it is classified as spam and falls into one of the categories mentioned above.
For example: An email has a spam score of 6.3. The threshold for low scoring spam is 5 and for high scoring spam is 20. This email is classified as "Low scoring spam" and based on the predefined user settings for "Low scoring spam", the server takes the necessary actions.
If you want to change these numbers to make the server more resilient or rigorous in dealing with spam, you can do so by following the procedure below:
- Log in to the cPanel of your hosting package and go to the Email section. Click on the MailScanner icon.
- Locate and click on the "Other settings" button.
- This page also includes settings for server spam score thresholds among other things.
- Select the new spam score thresholds you want to have on the server.
Note: The smaller the number, the more emails will be classified as spam. Therefore, it is possible that after the reduction of spam thresholds the server may start to reject emails that are not spam and may be useful to their recipients.
- After you have completed the changes you want, click on the "Change" button below the settings box.
Spam / Infected Email Overview
Mail Scanner features include an overview of infected / malicious emails that the application rejects.To view the full list of these emails, follow these steps:
- Log in to the cPanel of your hosting package.
- Click on the MailScanner icon.
- Above the dashboard click on the "MailControl" button.
- On this page you will find a list of all the spam / viruses that MailScanner has rejected ordered based on delivery date.
- You can also view more details about a malicious email, why it was classified as spam, and the area from which it was sent, by clicking the exclamation button next to the email's delivery date and under the "View / Status" column.
Get a report of spam / infected emails detected.
MailScanner allows you to set an email address where you can receive a report of spam / infected / malicious emails that have been sent to you and rejected by the application. In general, this report will contain a list of all the records appearing in MailControl section that is mentioned above.
Note: This feature is available in beta version.
Ιn order to enable this report (Digest Email):
- Login to the cPanel of your hosting package.
- Click on the MailScanner icon under Email section.
- Under the Current Settings panel, select "yes" in the Digest Email option of Change All Domain Settings panel, in order to include all your domains in the relative report. Alternatively, you can enable Digest Email only for the domains you wish to receive by selecting “yes” in the relative option of Change Individual Domain Settings.
- Next to Digest To field you can set your email address where you will receive the report.
- Digest Frequency (hours) indicates the frequency of these reports sent to the above email address. It is recommended that you leave the default option 24 (hours) in order to receive a complete report of the previous day.
- Once you are done with the changes you want, click the "Change" button right under the Domain Settings.
