Incoming messages disappear for ages if identified as spam

ahardy42

I have started a whitelist to control the spam getting through to my inbox but the spam filter is still quarantining new incoming emails that I often need immediate access to.

So now I have a couple of hundred email addresses whitelisted, but there are regularly new email addresses that get caught as spam. This is normally when I sign up to a new platform and it sends me an email address verification email. It just disappears for ages - 15 mins or an hour, I’m not sure - and sometimes of course the time-out has passed and I have to do it again.

How do I tell mailcow to send incoming emails straight to my inbox or to spam?

This is my rspamd thresholds dashboard.

DocFraggle

I guess it’s the (most valuable against SPAM) greylisting function. If you don’t care about about getting SPAM regularly you can disable it

https://docs.mailcow.email/manual-guides/Rspamd/u_e-rspamd-disable-greylisting/

ahardy42

Thanks for jumping in. Reading that documentation, I think the procedure outlined is above my paygrade. I have no command line access to my mailserver. I have admin and personal access to the mailcow UI and that’s it.

But does the doc state that this is disabled server-wide, on the last line?

To recap what I understand, if I want to get rid of quarantining where emails get held back in some situations before being delivered to my inbox or spam folder, I have to ask my hosting provider to change the settings on the server to disable greylisting?

DocFraggle

Yes, but I really don’t recommend this…

Another way would be to add the domain to the “Header-From: Allowlist” as greylisting is disabled for those as well:

System -> Configuration -> Global filter maps

Check the box at “I will be careful!” and head over to “Header-From: Allowlist”

Add the domain like

/.+example\.com/i

Click “Validate” and then “Save changes”

The downside of this is, you have to do it in advance and you have to know the domain it’s sent from.

ahardy42

You don’t recommend it? Are there problems with that approach?

On the Global Filter Maps front, I’m struggling to find it. Where is the System menu? In mailcow or my client (SoGo)?

DocFraggle

ahardy42 You don’t recommend it? Are there problems with that approach?

Yes, most SPAM senders send their SPAM email only once, so with greylisting the SPAM mail is blocked for the first attempt and the 2nd mail never arrives. I guess this catches ₃₀% off all SPAM mails alone.

ahardy42 Where is the System menu? In mailcow or my client (SoGo)?

In the mailcow admin UI

ahardy42

I can see why greylisting and quarantining are recommended, but I guess my use case overrides that.

I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I seem to have lost my “admin” login, presumably not realising that there was a level in-between. I see 3 ways of logging in now where I always only ever saw 2 - as a user (do this all the time), as ‘domain admin’ (do this regularly too) and as an ‘admin’ - which I have never done.

So the admin user controls the Global Filter Maps, not the domain admin? Makes sense. I’ll have to go back to the hosting provider.