I don't think there have been any big changes that might have caused this to happen lately.  You might give it a little more time and see how it reacts.  Also are you having any issues getting regular non-spam message into your inbox?  Might send yourself a few test messages, or ask your friends to so you can make sure your not losing any important e-mails.

Interesting.

At about the same time (late afternoon, October 13th) spam messages suddenly stopped arriving in my inbox. Since then, I have only been getting 2 or 3 per day. I used to get 50 to 100.

I have never configured SpamAssasin on my account, it has always been disabled. I have always preferred to filter spam with my email client at home after downloading them. I do this so that I can review the spam for any false positives.

Like gadgetfan, I am concerned that I may not be receiving all email that I should. To date, I have not noticed any missing email, other than the lack of spam.

I have a ticket open with support asking if any changes were made to email processing. So far, the response has been to try enabling then disabling SpamAssasin to see if that does anything. After a couple of days monitoring, I was about to reply to the ticket advising that there has been no change. I am still only receiving 2 or 3 spam messages per day.

I too would like to know if Lunarpages has made any changes to their email systems.

Regards,
...jim

PS. I have just updated my ticket, and included a link to this thread.

I too have noticed a significant reduction in the amout of spam mail I am getting for the last week or so.

I have totally turned off spam assassin and I still am receiving almost no spam or other mail either. Every test I have tried from other mail accounts is getting through, but without confirmation from LP of some other mechanism being in place, I still wonder if legit mail is being bounced that I do not know about. It is just too strange that somehow the account dropped from 20 or more spam messages a day to almost nothing.

Hello everyone,

None of our servers are having an "abnormal" configuration, as we usually try to run similar, tested versions across all our servers. That being said, the newest CPanel versions (+11) have quite a different way of handling spam, mostly because of the new version of SA thats been implemented. Also, the new exim configurations (which, again, are quite similar across every shared server) are making more use of the RBL kind of lists, regardless of the Spam Assassin settings. As a result, even if the sender tries to reach his friend with a legit email, if he is doing it from a "well known, spamming IP", then the message will (likely) be bounced back with a message concerning the block.

This is of a great help since:
a) it helps us keeping your mailboxes cleaner, which, in turn
b) has a good effect on the server load (and performance) and
c) ensures that no emails are actually lost, because of the bounceback (the sender WILL known that he couldn't reach his receipt).

However, if you do notice any loss of emails, please contact us immediately so we can check the logs and ensure that everything is actually functioning as planned.


Thank you

LP does run SpamAssassin regardless of whether you have it enabled or not. I have never explicitly enabled SA (on Mizar), yet once in a while I get a message marked "SpamAssassin thinks this is spam" or something to that effect. I'm receiving email on Thunderbird on my PC (not Webmail), and don't have SA installed there, so where else could it be?

While overall, I think LP provides decent value for the price, it's cases like this where the lack of communication and consistency from LP staff gets frustrating.  Here's a condensed history of my interactions with LP on this issue, with text highlighted in red to indicate conflicting explanations.  I know comments can be misinterpreted out of context, so I'm doing my best to preserve the flow of the "conversation" without pasting the whole thing, but I'll happily provide the full ticket text to anyone who's interested.

On Oct. 15, I posted the initial message at the top of this thread (which, I concede, is not an official support ticket request), asking what, if any, changes had been made over the past few days

In less than 10 minutes, Mitch advises that he's unaware of any relevant changes

On Oct. 17, I open a support ticket asking essentially the same questions.  Specifically,
10 minutes later, I receive a response from JohnnyStaggs saying that there have been no changes on LP's end, but the question of what could cause the change in SA behavior is not addressed

After a couple more rounds of back-and-forth the same day, I ask again
After a one-week lapse, LP informs me that
I request confirmation that there HAS been a recent cPanel upgrade, and am told
On Oct. 28, After complying with an LP request for a test account on my domain, I'm told (by Adrian, who has commented above in this thread) His response is very similar to what he posted in this thread.  I'm not sure why it took so long for someone to just state that LP has started using RBL lists...that would have explained a lot.

This is followed by a couple more rounds of me asking for greater detail on what changes were implemented when, since so far, everything has said or implied that the changes took place in July, which wouldn't explain a mid-October behavior change.

Today, Nov. 1, Adrian informs me that
So it took over two weeks to get what still amounts to conflicting information (or a lack of information among at least some of the LP staff).  I'm trying to give LP the benefit of the doubt here...there are a lot of servers, and I'm sure a lot of support staff, but shouldn't there be some sort of reasonably accessible master list (at least to the support staff, if not the subscribers) of changes made on each server?  I would think that it should have been relatively simple for someone, upon seeing my initial ticket, to look up that information and say, "Yes, there was a cPanel update around Oct. 13."  Even if that particular tech didn't know that it caused both changes to SpamAssassin behavior and implemented RBL list checks, at least we would have known that something had changed.  The first few LP staff to address my questions seemed to not know at all that anything had changed in mid-October.

With respect to at least the complaints I've personally had about LP service and support, the consistent theme is a failure of communication, either by lack of correct/consistent information, or simply an overall lack of communication.  I'm still here, which must say something about the fact that nothing has yet pushed to me leave LP, but it's still an area in which I think LP has significant room for improvement.