cPanel email filters simply not working
Hi, all.
Simply as in the thread subject, I'm having trouble getting anything effective out of the cPanel mail filters.
Some background: I have my own domain on shared hosting with JustHost (who have been otherwise great at hosting but recommended "just enable SpamAssassin" as the solution to my spam problem), up until the last few months everything has been OK, but at some point the spammers have got hold of email addresses on my domain.
My first attempt was to enable SpamAssassin and gradually up the strength setting until the spam stopped. This didn't work even at the highest setting and spam (and I'm talking really obvious stuff like blue pills, high strength flashlights, garage flooring, what Donald Trump thinks, etc) was still getting through. Legitimate emails were not arriving in my inbox or in my junk folder. When they were sent to two email addresses on the domain, one copy would get through and the other wouldn't.
I also tried to train SpamAssassin by use of Ham and Spam folders and that didn't work either. I couldn't work out other instructions about running cron jobs. I'm not a sysadmin or particularly technical person in this regard.
I then disabled SpamAssassin and checked all of the email tools available were disabled and had no rules applied. They have SpamAssassin, Spam Experts and Spam Hammer. There is also Account filtering and User filtering. The same behaviour of absorbing spam but rejecting legitimate emails from hotmail and gmail addresses continued.
I have in the last few weeks created a rule set under Account filtering, which as far as I'm aware works across the whole domain. The rules were in the form of the below:
Reply Address ends with .ru or
Reply Address ends with .pz or
Reply Address ends with .win
Actions: Discard message
This achieved no results. Spam from these domains were still getting through at the same rate. I saw advice online that said to change Reply Address to Any Header. This has not made any difference at all. I am receiving around 150 spam emails a day per email box. As you can imagine, this is a real pain if I don't check email for a couple of days and then have to play 'spot the legitimate message' in among all of that.
I've seen some solutions around the web talking about examining exim log outputs. I don't know what that is and, to be quite frank, it's a mystery to me.
The hosting service is running cPanel 11.
Please can anyone give me some sort of pointer as to where things are going wrong?
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They have SpamAssassin, Spam Experts and Spam Hammer.
Assuming you mean, your Hosting Provider offers these various services inside your cPanel. If that's the case, they've got lots of options for you that you might do better speaking with them about.0 -
Hi, thanks for the reply. Yes, as I said above, I tried SpamAssassin to no avail, and JustHost's support response was "enable SpamAssassin". I've previously looked into getting it to be effective and have had no success. These cPanel built-in filters seem to be simple to set up, yet they aren't running in accordance to what I've selected. Is there some setting somewhere that I need to enable, either in cPanel or in a config file on the server (which I have access to via ftp) to fire up these filter rules? 0 -
No. As a Website owner, the actual configuration files for preventing spam would not be accessible to you. The hosting service is running cPanel 11.
cPanel 11 what, exactly? You should see this on the left side menu, or under Server Information if its enabled on your account. Because your Hosting Provider is offering multiple options to you, I still think it best to speak directly with them about this. They can take a closer look at your account, Apache SpamAssassin settings and possibly suggest another option for you using one of those other services, like Spam Experts for example.0 -
No. As a Website owner, the actual configuration files for preventing spam would not be accessible to you. cPanel 11 what, exactly? You should see this on the left side menu, or under Server Information if its enabled on your account. Because your Hosting Provider is offering multiple options to you, I still think it best to speak directly with them about this. They can take a closer look at your account, Apache SpamAssassin settings and possibly suggest another option for you using one of those other services, like Spam Experts for example.
It's cPanel 11.48.4 I couldn't get SpamAssassin to work and they seem reluctant to help in any way other than to tell me to turn it on. I'm going to try out SpamExperts but I would still like some pointers as to why the cPanel filters don't appear to be working as set up, if anyone has any hints.0 -
Hello :) You may find the following thread helpful if your goal is to block specific domain names: Blocking Entire domains .work, .click, .science, .eu Thank you. 0 -
Hey notadoctor, I've been experiencing the same issue, and followed cpanel support directions, and it makes absolutely no change. Spam emails are somehow scoring below the spam assassin threshold, meanwhile legit emails fall into my spam folder. It's unbelievable. Wanted to check in and see if you had found a fix for this ugly problem. Could definitely use some help. Cheers. 0
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