Mailscanner Tagging: Yes Or No?

We recently installed Mailscanner on our servers to improve spam handling. This is done on the basis of a score that Mailscanner applies to each email, then tags the email accordingly. For instance, emails with a low score receive no tag. Emails with a medium score will receive this tag: {Spam?}. Emails with a high spam score receive this tag: {Definitely Spam?}.

So, you may be wondering how this helps you…

If you are using Outlook to download your messages, you can setup mail rules to delete spam based on the headers. However, this cannot be done in Outlook Express.

For those of you with Outlook Express, we have kept the subject line tags generated by Mailscanner, which will allow you to filter your email based on the Subject. For example, you can tell it that any email with {Definitely Spam?} should be deleted immediately (Of course, you can do this at the server level as well…)

Then you can tell Outlook Express to send any mail with {Spam?} in the subject to a specific folder, where you can look at it later to make sure nothing has been incorrectly tagged. (And if it has, you can whitelist the address in your Mailscanner settings.)

Of course, if you are using Mailscanner to delete anything with a high spam score, and are separating medium spam scoring email using Outlook or Gmail or another method, you may not want to deal with the subject tags.

So, it’s up to you: Do you want the tags, or not? Tell me what you think…

Four Steps To Ridding Your Inbox Of Spam

Spam, otherwise known as junk mail, or mail that you did not ask for, has jumped to an all time high of 92.6 percent of all email, according to Information Week. Just two years ago, the BBC reported that spam comprised only 70 percent of all email.

Needless to say, the number of spam messages being sent has exploded in a relatively short period of time.

What does this mean for you?

It means that you need to take specific steps in managing your email to get rid of spam.

The steps you need to take include:

1. Set your default email address to :fail: (the only people who send email to an address that doesn’t exist on your account are spammers).
2. Create all your existing email accounts as POP accounts.
3. Do not post your email address on your website. Instead, use a contact form with anti-spam measures).
4. Turn on the spam prevention software in your hosting account. (Watersweb servers use mailscanner/Spamassassin.)

What techniques do you use to keep your inbox clean?