Spam Filtering Options

WeDoHosting.com provides several spam filtering options, some of which you may customize to suit your requirements. First, we have installed SpamAssassin on our mail servers and provide our clients with the option of customizing their configuration. We also provide TMDA (tagged message delivery agent) for customers that want a little more protection against unwanted emails. Finally, we also subscribe to a number of live databases that track spam sources and prevent our network from receiving emails from those locations, as well as reject emails from mail servers that do not have a properly configured reverse-DNS entry.

It is true that some people feel uneasy about having a piece of software determine what constitutes spam. It is for this reason that we give our customers the choice to disable the spam checking completely. To do this, you only need to send an email to our Support Department and ask to disable all spam checking for your domain.

For those who choose to utilize our spam filtering system, this is a description of the various options.

SPAMASSASSIN: SpamAssassin is an application installed on our mail servers that checks every single piece of incoming mail against content-matching rules and then applies a "score" to that email. By default, our mail servers will determine that an email is spam if the message scores 5 or higher. If you have not adjusted your default settings, then email with a score of 5 or more will be labelled as "**SPAM**" in the subject line of the email when you download it to your computer.

You can adjust these default settings within the control panel for email management (http://mail.wedohosting.com). You can lower that score which will catch and label more spam, or you can increase that score so that less mail is labelled as spam. You can also tell the mail server simply to delete the message if it thinks it's spam so that it never arrives in your Inbox. Remember, this is software that's determining whether or not a piece of mail is spam and may not always be 100% correct. If we reject mail due to spam, then it cannot be recovered.

TMDA: Tagged Message Delivery Agent is also an application installed on our servers designed to reduce the amount of spam that you receive. We do not enable this by default, you will need to enable this feature by going to http://mail.wedohosting.com/cgi-bin/tmda.cgi

This is a challenge/response system that holds your email and delivers a message to the sender the first time they try and send you an email letting them know that they must identify themselves as a real person before their email will be released and delivered to the recipient. Once the sender confirms they are a real person rather than a spammer then their email will be released from the holding queue and be sent along to you. They will not be challenged for a response the next time they send you an email. You can manage these settings and check your holding queue for mail waiting to be confirmed, and decide to whitelist/blacklist particular email addresses manually.

REVERSE-DNS: Unsolicited email is often sent using mail servers that are incorrectly configured. A common characteristic of a mail server used for sending spam is that they do not have a reverse-dns entry for their server's IP address. Our mail server has a method to check for this setting and by default will reject mail from senders that do not have it enabled. You have the ability to disable the check for reverse-dns by logging into http://mail.wedohosting.com and going to "Mailboxes" and then the "Spam Settings" for "postmaster". By disabling this feature, you will receive a significant increase of spam and we advise clients instruct their senders to ask their mail server's technician to enable the reverse-dns. It's easy to do.