

This allows you to filter these emails in Outlook and never risk losing an email that should not have been marked as spam (false positive).

Often, spam is specially marked with “***SPAM***” in the subject. Your server’s Mail Transport Agent is then left to decide what to do. It only makes a recommendation and gives a score. Where does the email get blocked?Īpache SpamAssassin itself never blocks email. Your email now scores -12.8 which is less than 5.0 and the email is allowed to be delivered. Now Apache SpamAssassin tests to see if your email address is in the whitelist, the answer is “YES” and the test “adds” -20 to your email score, which was sitting at 7.2. Luckily for you, your clients have added your email to their mailing “whitelist”. Normally, these sort of “Special Offer” emails get an increased spam score. Let us say you are sending a “Special Discount” email to all your customers. Negative scores “improve the credit rating” of an email. Score it 2.5.Ī rule involving the above would have a “regular expression” telling Apache SpamAssassin to check the BODY of the email for money and/or dollars & win or won & millions in any order. If we find the combination of these words and variants in an email, it has a large chance of being spam.If you find the word “millions” in an email, it does not mean it is spam.If you find the word “win” or “won” in an email, it also does not mean it is spam.If you find the word “money” or “dollars” in an email, it may not mean it is spam.If done well, this increases the accuracy greatly. The individual rules may not score much, but in combination, they get a score boost. You can even set up certain rule combinations. These rules can be very simple or very complex. The RulesĪpache SpamAssassin has rulesets that are downloadable and get updated regularly as the nature of junk mail changes. The higher you set this, the more “spammy” email is allowed through and the lower this is set, the more chances there are that valid email gets blocked.

When this total reaches the Spam Threshold as set by the Administrator or the User, the email is marked as spam. Some of the more obvious tests will add or subtract 1.0 to 2.5 to an email and you can also create a custom score of up to +100 (all email is spam) or -100 (no email is spam).Īs an email gets tested, each test score is added to a running total. This per check score is usually very small, typically between ☐.01 and ☐.5. Each check may add or subtract to an email’s score. Checks run in priority and some checks are skipped if certain other checks succeed or fail.

All-in-all, Apache SpamAssassin has over 1000 tests available, but not all are used.
#SPAMASSASSIN SCORE RANGE HOW TO#
Looking to set it up on cPanel? Visit our guide on How to Configure Apache SpamAssassin™ on cPanel How does Apache SpamAssassin arrive at the spam score?Įach email sent to Apache SpamAssassin for checking can go through up to 600 individual tests. Apache SpamAssassin is modular and allows for the use of custom tests and score adjustment.
#SPAMASSASSIN SCORE RANGE SOFTWARE#
It is a complex system that is now maintained by the Apache Software Foundation. Apache SpamAssassin is the open-source anti-spam software used by most Linux based email systems to filter and block unsolicited emails.
