Issue Help needed with spam filtering

[ciB]

Server operating system version

Ubuntu 24.04.1

Plesk version and microupdate number

Plesk Obsidian 18.0.66 Update #2

I am using the plesk email security pro extension (licensed), but it seems like a lot of our spam is actually not caught, which leads me to believe some things aren't working right.

The first weird issue I have is that I have disabled "Apply individual settings to spam filtering", but it does not matter what I change the settings to in the security extension, it uses whatever the user has setup - which is spam setting set to 7 - most of our spam is 4-5, so I tried to lower this setting, but it has no effect on the users - and I cannot go through every user to edit the setting manually... It's the same with what to do with the spam - server setting is "move to spam" but it seems to ignore the setting if user has set to use a prefix.

Here is an example of a mail, user has spam setting set to 5 and use prepending ****SPAM****.


Weirdly enough, I also had incidents where the spam tag ****SPAM**** was attached twice to the mail - it seems like regular spam filter (that comes with plesk without the extension) is also running, and sometimes interfering with the pro version of the extension.

After changing some of the settings of that user, and sending the test spam mail, I got the following header:

Please also notice that X-Spam-Checker-Version is available in the second header, but not in the first.. what's going on?

 

[Kaspar]

The first weird issue I have is that I have disabled "Apply individual settings to spam filtering", but it does not matter what I change the settings to in the security extension, it uses whatever the user has setup - which is spam setting set to 7 - most of our spam is 4-5, so I tried to lower this setting, but it has no effect on the users - and I cannot go through every user to edit the setting manually... It's the same with what to do with the spam - server setting is "move to spam" but it seems to ignore the setting if user has set to use a prefix.

This is odd, because to my knowledge, the "Apply individual settings to spam filtering" option is specific to the regular SpamAssassin component in Plesk. It should not be available when using PES. Out of curiosity, where exactly do you see the "Apply individual settings to spam filtering" option in Plesk?

Here is an example of a mail, user has spam setting set to 5 and use prepending ****SPAM****.

View attachment 27764
Weirdly enough, I also had incidents where the spam tag ****SPAM**** was attached twice to the mail - it seems like regular spam filter (that comes with plesk without the extension) is also running, and sometimes interfering with the pro version of the extension.

That would probably also explain why you still see the "Apply individual settings to spam filtering" option. If you go to Tools & Settings > Updates > components > mail, does SpamAssassin get listed as an installed component?

 

[ChristophRo]

@ciB

Your first email got whitelisted and so correctly not flagged as spam. (despite the score being 11.21 and thus way above the limit of 5 that is needed to mark it as spam)
So you need to check WHY it got whitelisted....
I assume that either the enevelope-from/return-path or the from address is on the whitelist of the recipient user/domain. (or even the global whitelist?)

 

[ciB]

@ciB

Your first email got whitelisted and so correctly not flagged as spam. (despite the score being 11.21 and thus way above the limit of 5 that is needed to mark it as spam)
So you need to check WHY it got whitelisted....
I assume that either the enevelope-from/return-path or the from address is on the whitelist of the recipient user/domain. (or even the global whitelist?)

It is not whitelisted though, neither in sever settings nor in user settings.

This is odd, because to my knowledge, the "Apply individual settings to spam filtering" option is specific to the regular SpamAssassin component in Plesk. It should not be available when using PES. Out of curiosity, where exactly do you see the "Apply individual settings to spam filtering" option in Plesk?


That would probably also explain why you still see the "Apply individual settings to spam filtering" option. If you go to Tools & Settings > Updates > components > mail, does SpamAssassin get listed as an installed component?

Spamassasin gets listed as a component. If I use the search function in plesk, I find "Spam filter" which I clicked on. Spam filter there was turned on. Do I need to turn of off?

 

[Kaspar]

Spamassasin gets listed as a component.

Listed as an installed component? That's strange, the PES extension should have uninstalled the SA component when it got activated. You can try to uninstall the SA component yourself manually. I am not sure what impact that would have on SA for the PES extension. There is an possibility that you might need to re-install the PES extension too. But I am not sure about that.

 

[ciB]

Listed as an installed component? That's strange, the PES extension should have uninstalled the SA component when it got activated. You can try to uninstall the SA component yourself manually. I am not sure what impact that would have on SA for the PES extension. There is an possibility that you might need to re-install the PES extension too. But I am not sure about that.

Yes, but I think I've read somewhere in the docs that there is no need to remove it.. I reinstalled PES and it now automatically deactivated the spam filtering in the mails settings (the none PES version). Let's see if this fixes the problem.