Step 1

Log into http://mail.wedohosting.com as postmaster using the password included with your setup instructions. Logging into this control panel as postmaster allows you to control the settings for all email addresses on the entire domain. TIP! If you only want to modify your own email address, then enter the first part of your email address under "username" followed by your domain name and password. This will allow you to manage your own personal settings such as spam filtering, and vacation responders.

SCREENTSHOT:

Step 2

Click the option for "Mailboxes" either along the top or down the side.

SCREENTSHOT:

Step 3

At this point, you can either manage the spam settings for your individual email addresses or for the entire domain name. We will review the features for both options.

Click the "SPAM SETTINGS" for the "postmaster" user so that we can review all of the possible options. The postmaster user has the same spam filtering options as all individual email addresses, but also includes a setting that controls the entire domain called "reverse-dns".

SCREENTSHOT:

Step 4

This is the window with all of your spam filtering controls, all of them are outlined below.

All of these options are available within each mailbox, with the exception of the "reverse-dns" setting. To control this option, you must select the postmaster user.

SCREENTSHOT:

OPTION 1: Activate TMDA

Tagged Message Delivery Agent is an application installed on our servers designed to reduce the amount of spam that you receive. 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.

Note: enabling this feature will only do so for the selected mailbox. To add this feature to other mailboxes, you will need to do so individually.

OPTION 2: Tag mail above this score as SPAM

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 lower this level, which will cause the mail server to detect more email as spam or you can increase this level so it’s not as strict and lets more mail through without being labeled.

Note: enabling this feature will only do so for the selected mailbox. To add this feature to other mailboxes, you will need to do so individually.

OPTION 3: BOUNCE mail above this score

If our mail server determines that mail is spam, you may choose to reject it completely at the server level so that it is not downloaded to your computer. In this example, mail that has a score of 5 or more will be rejected at the server level and bounced back to the sender as spam. By default when we activate your account, this level is set to 99.

Note: enabling this feature will only do so for the selected mailbox. To add this feature to other mailboxes, you will need to do so individually.

OPTION 4: Manage Your Whitelist and Blacklist

Considering that spam is detected by software and not human beings, some mail may arrive and be incorrectly identified as spam. For example, you subscribe to a mailing list and the content of their mailings could be considered 'spamy' by the mail server so they arrived labeled as "SPAM" in the subject line. You can choose to white list this domain or email address using the white list options. Mail arriving for your email address from this recipient will no longer be labeled as spam regardless of its content.

Additionally, you can also add email addresses to the black list and we will always bounce the mail back to this sender.

Addresses for both the Whitelist and Blacklist can be either a full email address, ie. bob@wedohosting.com, or use the '*' character as a wildcard, ie. *@yahoo.com, which specifies all email from anyone at yahoo.com

Note: enabling this feature will only do so for the selected mailbox. To add this feature to other mailboxes, you will need to do so individually.

OPTION 5: Bounce mail from hosts without REVERSE DNS

This option is only available by selecting the "SPAM SETTINGS" for the postmaster account. 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, however you will certainly receive a significant increase of spam and we advise clients to instruct their senders to have their mail server's technician enable the reverse-dns on their system. It's easy to do.

Note: This setting effects all incoming email for your entire domain name and cannot be selected for individual email addresses.