How to Create a Spam Filter

Let’s be honest, no one likes spam; not hosting providers, not web users, and certainly not us. Using one of our favourite features, Apache SpamAssassin, we want to equip you, the cPanel user, with a nifty trick to keep spam out of your inbox. Apache SpamAssassin™.

Preloaded into the cPanel dashboard, Apache SpamAssassin is an open-source tool built to filter and classify emails while blocking spam. Through a combination of subject line and body text analysis, Bayesian filtering, and DNS blacklists, SpamAssassin drastically limits and can prevent spam from touching your inbox.

Creating a Spam Filter
In the Email section of your cPanel account, choose Apache SpamAssassin.

Now you’re ready to set up email filters and specify how powerfully you’d like SpamAssassin to gate and vet incoming messages.

Here’s how:
Head to the “cPanel Email” section, navigate to “Global Email Filters,” and select “Create New Filter.” Give it a filter name – this is just for your reference of the filter you are creating and can be anything.

Select the “Rules” you would like to use for your filter. eg. From equals or From contains.

In the empty field type in the word or email address you would like to filter. Select “Deliver to folder” from the “Actions” section and enter the name of the folder to which you would like to direct the spam.

Click “Create” to activate the spam filter and, voila, your first filter is set up! (Be sure to check to occasionally check this folder to ensure items that are NOT spam aren’t being flagged.)