How does SpamAssassin work?

SpamAssassin is the leading open-source spam protection software used with Linux. It's included with every plan that uses CPanel with Web Host Pro. Not only do you have a lot of control over what you allow and don't allow in your inbox, but behind the scenes, SpamAssassin is working hard to eliminate known spammers and threats before they even enter the server.

Once you choose to use it in CPanel you will need to set the score limit between 0-10. Here are the details of the score limits.

Spam Assassin Score Limit

SpamAssassin considers messages with a score of 5 to be spam; however, you can adjust the spam score limit according to your preference. Simply select the desired spam score limit from the Score drop-down menu in the Filters section. The lower the score, the more restrictive the filter will be:

  • 0 means everything incoming will be marked as spam.
  • 5 is the default setting (and works well for typical users). We suggest using 4 for your setting.
  • 10 means that any message with a score of 10 or less will not be marked as spam.

If you are unable to set a spam score limit in the Filters drop-down menu, you can also change the default score using the following method:

  1. Under SpamAssassin Configuration, click Configure SpamAssassin.
  2. In the required_score field, enter your preferred value.
  3. Click Save at the bottom of the page.


Once you have the score set SpamAssassin will take over and mark any spam messages clearly so you can remove them. Or you can set up Auto-Delete which will remove the messages that are marked as spam. We also recommend this or you will have a lot of cleaning up to do. Here is how to activate Auto-Delete for SpamAssassin.

The auto-delete function automatically deletes messages that meet or exceed the spam score limit. Auto-delete can be enabled in the Filters section by clicking Auto-Delete Spam; it can be disabled by clicking Disable Auto-Delete Spam.

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