Preventing Spoofed and Bitcoin Spam Emails

These steps explain how to prevent spoofed emails as well as Bitcoin spam emails. A spoofed email is a spam email that when received appears to be from one's own email address or an email address from the same domain. Adjusting the SpamAssassin spam threshold score and configuring the calculated spam score settings will assist with filtering and preventing spoofed emails. 

Access to cPanel will be required to complete this process. Also, DNS nameservers for the domain will need to be set to InMotion Hosting values in order for cPanel DNS changes to work

DNS changes can take 4 to 24 hours to propagate.

Related Articles

InMotion Hosting Nameservers
Update SPF Record
Add DMARC Record in cPanel
Change SpamAssassin Spam Threshold Score

Prevent Spoofed Email

1. Log into cPanel
2. Confirm that an SPF record exists and is set up properly
   1. Click on Email Deliverability under the Email section
      
   2. Click Manage next to the domain to view the records in place
      TIP: These records can also be set manually and edited in the Zone Editor under the Domains Section of cPanel.
      NOTE: On a VPS, the SPF record should look like this:
      

      v=spf1 +mx +a +ip4:12.34.56.78 -all

      REPLACE: Be sure to replace 12.34.56.78 with the mail-sending IP of the server.
      NOTE: On a Shared Server, it should be:
      

      v=spf1 +mx +a +include:smtp.servconfig.com -all

3. Confirm that a DMARC record exists and is set up properly
4. Ensure SpamAssassin is enabled by clicking on Spam Filters in cPanel under the Email area
   
   
   1. Choose either Move New Spam to a Separate Folder or Automatically Delete New Spam in the SpamAssassin settings, but do not choose both
5. Set Spam Assassin's threshold setting to 3.5
6. Add the following custom rules to Spam Assassin by clicking Show Additional Configurations at the bottom of the page then Configure Calculated Spam Score Settings
   

   SPF_PASS  -0.1
   SPF_NEUTRAL 0.0
   SPF_FAIL 1.8
   SPF_SOFTFAIL 1

   NOTE: This means that for messages that fail an SPF check, SpamAssassin will add +1.8 to the message score, which should filter out most spoofed emails.