Knowledgebase

Overview

Warden provides administrators with the ability to automatically reject incoming email that exceeds a defined spam score threshold. When the Receive spam setting is configured to No, the Spam kill level parameter becomes active, enabling granular rejection of high-scoring messages.

Email classification operates as follows:

• Potential Spam: Messages scoring above the standard Spam level but below the Spam kill level are flagged for review or routed to a spam folder.
• Rejected Spam: Messages exceeding the Spam kill level are rejected at the SMTP layer before Postfix accepts them. 

Enabling this feature also ensures that emails matching entries in Settings -> Policy Blacklist are rejected outright rather than merely flagged as spam.

Note: Warden policies follow a hierarchical structure (Server level -> Domain level -> Mailbox level). Child policies inherit parent values unless explicitly overridden. For detailed information on policy inheritance, refer to the Policies documentation.

Enable Spam Kill Level at the Server Level

1. Navigate to Warden -> Settings -> Content Filter Settings -> Policy Settings -> Spam Filter.
2. Set the Receive spam option to No. This action activates the Spam kill level configuration field.
3. Configure the Spam kill level to a value higher than the standard Spam level. A threshold of 13 is recommended for initial deployment to ensure only high-confidence spam is rejected.

Reset Customized Child Policies

After modifying the server-level spam threshold, any domain or mailbox policies with manually overridden values may retain outdated thresholds. To maintain consistent filtering behavior across the environment, reset customized child policies to inherit the updated parent configuration.

To reset domain policies:

1. Navigate to Policies and select the target domains.
2. Click the Default button in the policy grid to restore inherited settings.

To reset mailbox policies:

1. Navigate to Policies and select the target domain.
2. In the domain selection dropdown, choose All, then click the search button to populate the list.
3. Select all mailboxes and click the Default button to apply parent-level settings.

Troubleshooting & Common Issues

• Legitimate email rejection: If valid messages are being rejected, verify that the Spam kill level is not configured too low. Increase the threshold incrementally and monitor bounce reports.
• Policy inheritance conflicts: If changes at the server level do not apply to specific domains or mailboxes, confirm whether those child policies contain custom overrides. Use the Default button in the policy grid to force inheritance from the parent configuration.