Anti Spam Control

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There are a number of ways in which spam or junk mail can be kept to a minimum. It is almost impossible to eliminate spam entirely and it is essential to ensure that spam control is not so severe that important e-mailsare lost. Here we deal with Anti-Spam. See also the section on mail filters.Some ways of spam control are:

  • Do not have clickable e-mail links on your website. This can lead to spam robots capturing your e-mail address.
  • Use the spam control on the server hosting your e-mail on the internet. TRY THIS FIRST.
  • Use your e-mail client's filters.
  • Use filters on the Zybert server.

  • Use Anti-Spam Control on the Zybert server.

Using Anti-Spam Control on the Zybert Server
These controls alone will not eliminate spam. They are just another level of protection. They are not designed for filtering thousands of IPs. If you are constantly adding e-mails to block, then you need to stop and consider what to do. They need consistent management.

First you need to set some initial options.

Anti Spam Settings

The anti-spam radio button needs to be selected On.
Leave local cache Off.
What to do with spam Tag.
Leave anti SPAM list server as bl.spamcop.net
In 'SPAM Tag' and 'SPAM Suspect Tag' you can write whatever message you like. This is what you will see when you get the e-mail.

There are then 4 catagories to consider:

  1. Local Blacklist
  2. Discard List
  3. Suspect List
  4. Whitelist

Before considering the various lists remeber they are based on IPs. IP (pronounced as seperate letters) can be likened to the normal letter post in that an IP is an address. So an email from some one at fredscompany.co.uk will actually be from a set of numbers in the format 123.456.123.456 Between the dots there are 1 to 3 digits. It is these IPs we are trying to block when blocking spam.

So how is the IP of a particular e-mail established? This is dependant on the particular e-mail program you are using. If you receive a spam e-mail you can forward it AS AN ATACHMENT to spam@mail, in which case the appropriate IP will automatically be added to the Suspect List (see 3 below ). Alternatively look at the headers, e.g. in Outlook Express, in folder view, right click an e-mail and choose Properties… Details… Message Source. Copy and paste this information in to a new e-mail and send it to spam@mail, with a descriptive Subject to suite yourself.

1. Local Black List

Local Blacklist
Addresses in the Local Black List will appear in your e-mail program with *****SPAM***** in the subject.

To ensure you never see e-mails from these addresses then you will need to copy and paste these IPs in to the Address Column in the Discard List.

2. Discard List

Discard List
Copy and paste the required addresses from the Local Black List in to the address field (red arrow). E-mail from these addresses will then be discarded and will no longer be delivered.

3. Suspect List

Suspect List
If you receive an e-mail you want to designate as spam, then forward the e-mail AS AN ATTACHMENT and it will appear on the Suspect List. When you next receive an e-mail from this address it will have *****SUSPECT***** in the subject.

If you then tick the box in the Block column and click 'Save All' then this will move the address to the Black List . When you next receive an e-mail from this address it will have *****SPAM***** in the subject.

If you want to never see e-mails from this address then see Discard List above.

4 Whitelist

White List
Enter any addresses here that are to be accepted. For example IPs starting with 192.168 are internal addresses and as such can be considered safe. Note it is not essential to put the full IP.

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