Clarification of Spam Filter Policies in ISPConfig3

[atjensen11]

I am hoping to get some clarification on the spam filter policies settings within ISPConfig3. I have the default policies which are:

Non-paying
Uncensored
Wants all spam
Wants viruses
Normal
Trigger happy
Permissive

Upon initial glance, there are a lot of red X icons showing. I am not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

I have some users that are complaining that they are receiving a higher number of spam emails on the new ISPConfig3 system than the previous system. The previous system was a Virtual user system on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS using a How To on this site.

Is there a policy on the ISPConfig3 system that is similar to the system established in the virtual user How To that could be used as a default? Can someone explain they checks done by each setting? Would anyone be willing to share their other spam filter settings?

[till]

The policys are the default ones from amavisd-new. So they are just examples that you can change to suit your needs. For detailed information on ecah option, please take a look at the amavisd-new documentation.

If you receive more spam, just set the spam level to a lower value.

[atjensen11]

OK, I will check the documentation and try to get up to speed.

One last question regarding the policies...When I create the email domain, I leave the spam filter policy setting there as "-Not Enabled-". Then when I create the email account, I enable the spam filter policy "Normal".

Users have stated that changing from "-Not Enabled-" to "Normal" at the email account level results in no discernable reduction of spam in their Inbox.

Do I have to enable the spam filter policies at both the domain and account levels? What heirarchy applies? What are the rules that apply when spam filter policies are enabled at both levels? Does the more restrictive policy win out? Does the email account policy level always override the domain policy if configured?

Thanks.

[till]

The setting of the mailbox has priority over the domain. Please see amavisd-new documentation for details as this is all handled by amavisd-new and not ispconfig.

[atjensen11]

OK. I have been doing a lot of reading on amavisd-new lately and studying the different settings within the ISPConfig3 spam filter.

I have one email account in ISPConfig that is being targeted heavily for SPAM. Furthermore, this user forwards me every message that comes in with a note like "I got another one".

Here is a header excerpt from one of these forwarded messages:

X-Envelope-From: <[sanitized]@[sanitized].org>
X-Envelope-To: <[sanitized]@[sanitized].org>
X-Envelope-To-Blocked: 
X-Quarantine-ID: <pJdldNwoaAgB>
X-Amavis-Alert: BAD HEADER SECTION Non-encoded 8-bit data (char A9 hex): From:
	\251 VIAGRA \256 Offic[...]
X-Spam-Flag: NO
X-Spam-Score: 5.628
X-Spam-Level: *****
X-Spam-Status: No, score=5.628 tag=3 tag2=6.9 kill=6.9
	tests=[DYN_RDNS_SHORT_HELO_HTML=0.287, HTML_IMAGE_ONLY_20=1.808,
	HTML_IMAGE_RATIO_02=0.55, HTML_MESSAGE=0.001,
	HTML_SHORT_LINK_IMG_3=0.556, MIME_HTML_ONLY=1.672, RDNS_DYNAMIC=0.1,
	SPF_SOFTFAIL=0.654]

Prior to receiving this email from the user, I had changed the spam filter policy to "Trigger Happy". The tag level settings for Trigger Happy are:

SPAM Tag Level=3
SPAM Tag2 Level=5
SPAM Kill Level=5
SPAM DNS Cutoff Level=0
SPAM Quarantine Level=0
SPAM Modifies Subject=Yes
SPAM Subject Tag= [POSSIBLE SPAM Score=_SCORE_] -
SPAM Subject Tag2= [SPAM SCORE=_SCORE_]-

But these settings are reflected in the X Headers of the excerpt I posted. I haven't modified any of the amavisd-new configuration files manually. I assume these settings are stored in the DB. Where can I check to verify ISPConfig3 is storing the values correctly?

[till]

The settings are all written correctly, as you wont see them otherwise in ispconfig as amavisd and ispconfig read the same database table. Make sure that you have set:

$final_spam_destiny = D_DISCARD;

in amavaisd 50-user file in debian or amavisd.conf in other linux distributions if you want spam to be deleted when it reaches the kill level. Then restart amavisd.