This is an extensive document that will cover almost everything you need to know in order to run a spam and virus free account when your mail accounts are hosted with Ausmade Hosting Services

So what is ASSP?

  • Anti-spam engine powered by ASSP.
  • Automatic whitelisting.
  • Clamd Antivirus enabled by default for all email traffic.
  • Detailed LOGS per domain/subdomain and per each filter.
  • Protection against email dictionary attack/bombers.
  • Advanced Spambox (collection of blocked email) and reporting system.

Where are blocked emails collected?

ASSP Anti-spam has been designed with great care to prevent blocking of desired emails from occurring, however, rarely it can still happen. ASSP uses a “SPAM SCORING MODE” which checks each email message sent to your account and it assigns scores using several SPAM filters, sums the scores collected by each filter and then determines if the email should be considered as SPAM or NOTSPAM. All blocked emails (SPAM) are collected in a Spam Folder where they can be inspected and managed as required.


Some details about how it works and what commands you can use to access reports and train it to deal with incoming email are listed below.
In the commands below to get reports, release an email or add an email to be blocked you will need to send an email from your account to the address listed in each case replace the "domain.com" with your actual domain name.

At the moment emails that are tagged as spam will be held in a folder called spambox under your account, these have emails older than 14 days automatically purged so you do not need to clear them out. You can view this folder when you log into your email account using webmail.


The spam emails can also be accessed via the control panel for the domain where you can view the log and send any on that have been mistakenly tagged.

Whenever an email is classified as Spam and is blocked, ASSP will bounce the email and the sender will receive an error like this:

        554 5.7.1 Mail (SESSIONID) appears to be unsolicited - resend with the code va9ytu5y appended to subject and ask to have your email whitelisted (the code used, in this case 'va9ytu5y' changes each 24 hours).

    So, in the case of a genuine sender, they will know their mail has not been delivered and, by re-sending the blocked email with the code va9ytu5y (not spam code) appended to the email subject, that the email will be accepted and you will receive it in your inbox.


Automatic whitelisting - Every time you send an email to someone new their email address will be whitelisted automatically.

For this reason, you should never reply to any spam mails as this will whitelist their addresses. You can whitelist any email address, or a complete domain, by sending an email to assp-white@domain.com; you should specify one or more email addresses you want whitelisted in the email body or email subject. If you want to whitelist a complete domain name (i.e. any_address@domain.com) you can use the wildcard *@domain.com. You can also send lists of domains and/or email addresses which should be whitelisted to assp-white@domain.com;. If you become aware that email you want is being blocked simply send an email to that address or you can send an email to assp-white@domain.com as described above.



ASSP reporting

When you receive a SPAM message in your inbox you have a choice to either just delete it and move on, or better to Report it to our mail server so the anti-spam filter can learn and correct the error improving its anti-spam performance. If you find any good emails in your /spambox you can send these using "forward as attachment" (or "forward" if "forward as attachment" is not supported in your email client) to assp-notspam@domain.com, which will whitelist the sending addresses preventing them from being blocked again.

How to report a false positive email

If you see a valid message in your /spambox IMAP or in your spambox@POP3 folder, you can report this email to our mail server and the anti-spam will learn and correct the error, improving its anti-spam performance. You can send these using "forward as attachment" (or "forward" if "forward as attachment" is not supported in your email client) to assp-notspam@domain.com, which will whitelist the sending addresses preventing them from being blocked again.


Email bounces with a Service denied error

If someone who is trying to contact you via email receives a bounced email with a "Service Denied error", it means their mailserver IP address is blocked by our ASSP Anti-Spam at IP address level. This may happen if that sender's IP address is on a recognized Blacklist.
In this case please contact me, so that appropriate arrangements can be made to allow that sender IP address to pass.


List of anti-spam ASSP email interface commands

assp-spam@   
Any mail sent or forwarded by local/authenticated users to this username will be interpreted as a report about a Spam that got through (spam found in your inbox). You should forward the received spam as an attachment to assp-spam@domain.com. This works best if the mails are forwarded as attachments or copied into a new mail (header and body), because simply forwarding the mail will remove the original header. You can send multiple emails as attachments.

assp-notspam@
If you see a valid message (not spam) in your /spambox IMAP folder or in your spambox POP3 folder, you can report this email to our mail server and the ASSP anti-spam will learn and correct the error improving its anti-spam performance. If you want report an email blocked incorrectly select the message in your inbox, right-click and select "Forward as attachment"; address it to assp-notspam@domain.com and click SEND. Shortly after your request you will receive an email confirmation, you have reported the spam message and it should not be blocked again.

assp-white@
You can whitelist an email or domain by sending an email to assp-white@domain.com specifying each email addresses you want whitelisted in the email body with each address on a separate line or, in the case of a single address, in the email subject. If you want to whitelist a whole domain (i.e. All_Addresses@domain.com) you can use the wildcard *@domain.com. Shortly after your request you will receive an email confirmation.

assp-notwhite@
You can remove an email or domain from the whitelist by sending an email to assp-notwhite@domain.com; shortly after your request you will receive an email confirmation.

assp-persblack@
Any mail sent by local/authenticated users to assp-persblack@domain.com will be interpreted as a request to add the listed address(es) to your personal blackListed addresses. Whole domains can be blocked by putting a wildcard in the user part of the address: '*@example.com'. You can receive a complete report about all your personal black list entries by sending an empty email to this address.

assp-notpersblack@
Any mail sent by local/authenticated users to assp-notpersblack@domain.com will be interpreted as a request to remove the listed address(es) from your personal blacklisted addresses.

asspanalyze@
Any mail sent or forwarded by local/authenticated users to asspanalyze@domain.com will be interpreted as a request for spam analysis of the mail. Shortly after your request you will receive an email with the analysis results.

asspblock@
Any mail sent by local/authenticated users to asspblock@domain.com will be interpreted as a request to get a report about blocked emails. Leading digits/numbers in the mail subject will be interpreted as "report request for the last number of days". If the number of days is not specified in the mail subject, a default of 5 days will be used to build the report. All characters behind the "number of days" will be interpreted as a regular expression to overwrite the BlockReportFilter - leading and trailing white spaces will be ignored.