Spam Detection and Spam Lists (DNS Blocklists)

Spam Checks

If this option is set, messages will be checked to see if they are spam.


Spam List

This provides a space-separated list of "Spam Lists" (or RBL's or DNSBL's) which are checked for each message. These lists are based on the numeric IP address of the server that sent the message to your MailScanner server. Every list used here must be defined in the "Spam List Definitions" file mentioned above.

Spam Domain List

This provides a space-separated list of "Spam Lists" (or RBL's or DNSBL's) which are checked for each message. These lists are based on the domain name of the sender address of each message. Every list used here must be defined in the "Spam List Definitions" file mentioned above.

Spam Lists To Reach High Score

If a message appears in at least this number of "Spam Lists" (as defined above), then the message will be treated as "High Scoring Spam" and so the "High Scoring Spam Actions" will happen. You probably want to set this to 2 if you are actually using this feature. 5 is high enough that it will never happen unless you use lots of "Spam Lists".
This can also be the filename of a ruleset.

Spam List Timeout

This is the number of seconds to wait for each "Spam List" lookup to complete. If the lookup takes longer than this, it is killed and ignored.

Max Spam List Timeouts

If a "Spam List" lookup times out for this many consecutive checks without ever succeeding, then the particular "Spam List" entry will not be used any more, as it appears to be unreachable. When MailScanner restarts itself after a few hours, MailScanner will try to use the entry again, in case service has resumed properly.

Is Definitely Not Spam

This option would normally be a ruleset. Any messages for which the ruleset result is "yes" will never be marked as spam. This is used to create a spam "whitelist" of addresses which are never spam. You will probably want to include your own site (or your own site's IP addresses) in this ruleset.

Is Definitely Spam

This option would normally be a ruleset. Any messages for which the ruleset result is "yes" will always be marked as spam. This is used to create a spam "blacklist" of addresses of known spammers.

Definite Spam Is High Scoring

Setting this to yes means that spam found in the blacklist is treated as "High Scoring Spam" in the "Spam Actions" section below. Setting it to no means that it will be treated as "normal" spam. This can also be the filename of a ruleset.