This list of Frequently Asked
Questions is provided to help you understand
the Mail Scanning Service.
Will spam be deleted before I retrieve
my email?
No email is deleted from your mailbox, unless you configure it to do
so through the cPanel control panel. Any email reported by the system as spam will have the subject
line modified and header records added (tagged) to indicate them
so that you can automatically filter them
from your inbox and place them in a separate folder so that you can
check them at a later time. You can configure MailScanner to delete
email marked as Spam and/or Definitely Spam for you, but beware of
the issues in the following answers to spam related questions.
Should I tell you about incorrectly
tagged spam?
Not unless it is an email from someone you regularly receive email from. The simplest thing to do would
be to add an extra inbox rule in your email
client to keep email from them in your inbox. Alternatively, you can add them to your whitelist in the cPanel MailScanner configuration.
Will all spam be detected?
No. All the email is scanned and assigned a score based on the likelihood
that an email is spam. Thresholds (low scoring and high scoring spam) are used to determine whether an
email should be tagged as spam: it is important that this is done
to help avoid false-positives and false-negatives.
Is all email tagged as spam, spam?
Not necessarily. The system is not foolproof and there will be instances
where legitimate email is tagged as spam and where spam is not tagged
as such. This is why all email is delivered by default, so you can
filter them email in your email client and check through the spam
to ensure there is no email that you actually need.
I don't need (spam/virus) checking,
can I only have email scanned for one?
Yes, you can configure the service to either scan for viruses, spam
or both.
Will viruses be deleted before
I retrieve my email?
Yes, if you set Virus Scanning to yes in the MailScanner Front-end. All emails and file attachments will be scanned for viruses. If
one is found, the virus is removed from the email before it is delivered
to your mailbox, a text file attachment will be added to the email
notifying you of the virus infection. Removed viruses and dangerous
file attachments removed from email may be stored in a quarantine
area on the server for 30 days. You can request the file from quarantine
as described in the text file attachments, or , preferably ask the
sender to resend the file in a zip archive.
Will all viruses be detected?
No system can guarantee 100% detection, though nearly all infected
files and dangerous file attachments should
be detected using this service. The service scans all email received and sent
through the server to help ensure that you do not accidentally start
spreading a virus yourself.
Do I still need a virus scanner
on my computer?
Yes! Not only can the service not guarantee that all email viruses
will be detected, there are many other ways that your computer can
become infected. You should always install an anti-virus solution
on every computer and ensure that it is constantly kept up to date.
How do I know whether and email
has a virus or is a spam?
There are two methods used to identify these emails to you. Firstly,
the subject line of the affected email will be prefixed with one
of the following:
{Disarmed} - indicates that the email contained html tags that are considered dangerous, e.g. iframe and form tags
{Virus?} - indicates that the email contained
a virus and has had the attachment removed.
{Filename?} - indicates that the email contained
a dangerous file attachment which has
been removed.
{Spam?} - indicates that the email is likely
to be spam - you should filter these emails into a separate folder
in your email client.
{Definitely Spam?} - indicates that the email
is almost definitely spam because it got a very high detection
score - you should filter these emails into a separate folder
in your email client.
Secondly, additional headers are added to the email:
X-___________-VirusCheck: Found to be clean - indicates
that the email passed the virus scanning tests.
X-___________-VirusCheck: Found to be infected -
indicates that email email contained a virus which has been removed.
X-___________-SpamCheck: spam - indicates that the
email is likely to be spam and contains information on how the
score was reached.
X-___________-SpamScore: ssssss - indicates the spam
score for the email. Each s represents 1 point, so sssss indicates
a score of 5. The service has a default threshold of 5 for {Spam?} and
20 for {Definitely Spam?}
Can the system simply delete all
email marked as spam?
We advise against this as it is possible that legitimate email will
be deleted and the sender will never know that you didn't receive
it. We recommend filtering the email in
your email client and placing it in a separate folder so that you
can check through it in your own time.
If you're happy that email marked as {Spam?}, and/or more suitably
{Definitely Spam?} you can then configure MailScanner to delete
that email.
Another alternative is to have all email marked as
{Spam?}, and/or more suitably {Definitely Spam?} delivered to a specific
email address. For example, spam@mydomain.com.
How do I configure my email software
to filter spam into a separate folder?
You should create a separate folder in your email client called Spam.
You should then create an inbox rule to
place any email containing the strings {Spam?} or {Definitely Spam?}
into that folder.