OS X Mountain Lion Server For Dummies

Blocking Spam and Other Nasty Bits

Mountain Lion Server is integrated with several types of filtering software to keep spam and viruses from reaching users. It uses the open source spam-blocking software called SpamAssassin, which does a statistical analysis of incoming e-mail to determine whether it’s probable spam. It also supports the blacklisting of certain e-mail servers, rejecting e-mail from known spammers. For this, Mountain Lion Server communicates with servers of the Spamhaus Project, an international not-for-profit organization that collects spam blacklist data. Mountain Lion Server also includes software that scans incoming messages for viruses.

To access the filtering settings from the Server app, click Mail in the sidebar and then click the Edit Filtering Settings button. Three settings are available, as shown in Figure 13-10:

Enable Virus Filtering: This option is either on or off. Virus filtering uses the open source ClamAV (www.clamav.net) software to keep track of known malicious e-mail viruses, worms, and other malware and is automatically updated regularly. When ClamAV detects malware in an e-mail message, it stores it in a folder instead of delivering the message to the user. It then sends an e-mail notification to the administrator.

Although fewer viruses are ...