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Marketing How a New Host and SpamAssassin™ Rescued My E-Mail Address by Bruce Cantwell Using the same e-mail address since 1996 has been a mixed blessing. Having my own domain name has given me the freedom to change ISPs and hosting services numerous times without notifying all my friends and colleagues of an address change. Unfortunately, my e-mail address has been harvested so many times that the increased onslaught of spam has been increasingly depressing. Since I manage websites and newsletters for a number of clients, and receive information through a variety of online forms, I didn't really trust my ISP or hosting service to decide which messages I wanted to receive. But when a large, predatory company swallowed up my former hosting partner and I moved my account to lunarpages, I decided to give their SpamAssassin™ feature a try. SpamAssassin™ analyzes e-mail headers and text for tricks commonly used by spammers and checks several blacklists to help decide whether or not the e-mail is legit. It uses a cumulative score of spam offenses, set by the user, to decide whether or not to move the e-mail message to a spam mailbox. I felt comfortable trying it because I could check on what it was filtering. This is basically how the configuration window looks. (I ommitted a section about applying specific scores to specific tests and shortened the blacklist and whitelist to one apiece but this is essentially what I see). Here is a look at some of the messages that Spam Assassin™ ushered into a special mailbox. Here's how it analyzed a list of the offenses found in an e-mail with the subject: "hi". If your current host offers SpamAssassin™, I recommend that you give it a try. If they don't, you may want to take a look at lunarpages. So far I've set up ten domains with them. Their control panel is easy to use and their tech support people were able to answer all of my questions. Visit them here.