Plesk 8.6 and Anti-pam Techniques

[Steve Allison]

Plesk 8.6 and Anti-spam Techniques

I am interesting to hear from other Plesk veterans what techniques you employed to cmobat the ever growing problem with Spam.

I host a single plesk box with at least 20 companies dealing mail to over 1000 users. The anti-spam features that come with Plesk 8.6 include Spamassasin which can be an effective tool to combat spam, however only if it is trained sufficiently.

The problem is that my users have no interest in training their own spam filters, and I don't have the time to do it for so many users, let alone reading all their legitimate mail.

I tried using MagicSpam, however it seems like a very brutal on/off switch that caused a lot of complaints from false positives.

I also have available 2 Postfix mail servers that are used as off-site Backup MX. I could quite happily put these to use as the a single primary/backup mx set if an effective solution is available on the Postfix platform.

What I am looking for is something that is compatible with my current setup (Plesk/Postfix), even if it requires a seperate machine, like a Mail gateway. I don't mind paying for such a service, as I'm sure a lot of work must go into spam fighting, however we are a small company that host only 22 domains and although there are a lot of mailboxes, they don't all necessarily receive a great deal of traffic, therefore a pricing scheme that tends towards our usage would be beneficial.

Regards,
Steve

 

[IgorG]

Steve,

What about new Greylisting spam protection feature in 9.2.x versions of Plesk? More details here http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/PPP9/Doc/en-US/plesk-9.2-administrators-guide/

 

[atomicturtle]

I havent finished this in regard to using Postfix as a SMTP gateway, but Ive got it working under plesk so far:

ClapF, a mailscanner for postfix: https://atomicorp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3571

I do have another SMTP gateway that is a complete anti-virus/anti-spam toaster based on qmail, called Project Gamera:
http://www.atomicrocketturtle.com/Joomla/content/view/77/29/

Ultimately I hope to duplicate what I can do with qmail/qmail-scanner using clapf and postfix.

 

[IgorG]

This generally means that either you have your server misconfigured, you are leaking spam, or your server is generating 'backscatter' which can get you listed as well. To check the first item, you should review 'Best Practices' documents to see if you are configured correctly. Our MagicSpam partner has a good resource for that. (http://www.linuxmagic.com/best_practices/) If you think your server is causing 'backscatter', this may be when you have your SpamAssassin or email server configured to 'bounce' spam, but they get bounced to forged addresses. You might want to consider MagicSpam for Plesk, which blocks that traffic, rather than bouncing it.

New FAQ's

Q. Can MagicSpam for Plesk work with the SpamAssassin Module?

A. Yes, MagicSpam acts during the SMTP phase, and your SpamAssassin works after. MagicSpam and SA will work happily together, and SpamAssassin server loads will drop significantly.

Q. My SpamAssassin load is going through the roof! Help!

A. Have you considered MagicSpam for Plesk? One of the simplest and easiest add-ons for Plesk, it not only stops the majority of attacks before it hits SpamAssassin, but rejects the bulk of trojan and bot generated emails without adding to server load.

Q. Can I use RBL's or Blacklists with Plesk?

A. Yes, you can. But you might find it simpler and easier to use the MagicSpam Module for Plesk. This allows for simpler management, whitelisting, blacklisting and full logging of all SMPT traffic, both HAM and SPAM, and it comes with automatic subscriptions to many of your favourite RBL's

Q. I tried to deliver a bounce message to this address, but the bounce bounced!

A. This can happen when a spammer forges a from signature. It is called 'backscatter', and can get you on blacklists, even though you didn't send the email. Spammers try to 'bounce' emails off of your server. You need to 'reject' emails instead of bouncing them whenever possible. There is a Spam Module from one of our partners which is especially good at stopping the majority of this problem. Visit our store, or http://www.magicspam.com for more information.