Skip to main content

Spam blocking in 2026

I self host my email since 20+ years. Always done with the postfix + dovecot stack with the works (dkim dmark DNS stuff etc).

In the last few years I just removed all spam filters as they where a chore and didn't provide no much benefit (3-5 spam emails per week) even if my main email address has been out and about for at least 2 decades or more.

Recently, last few weeks, spam is picking up to the point I receive some 10+ spam emails per day and this is pretty annoying, obviously.

So, what are you doing for spam filtering at server level nowadays? Is it still spamassassin circus? Anything better or more efficient?

#selfhosted
This entry was edited (4 hours ago)
in reply to Shimitar

irmadlad
irmadlad
• •
Are you serving from a homelab or VPS? If a homelab, then you could use pFsense to filter spam. I don't run my own email server but I do use pFsense to filter 95% of the junk from my inbox. I'm not sure how you'd accomplish that on a VPS other than employing some type of spam filtering software.
in reply to irmadlad

tofu
tofu
• •
How do you block email spam with a firewall?
in reply to tofu

irmadlad
irmadlad
• •
DNSBL and filter lists. You can use PfBlockerNG to import abuse lists, botnets, known open relays which reduce spam. You can also apply GeoIP blocklists to upstream SMTP hosts.
in reply to irmadlad

Shimitar
Shimitar
• •
What? I have opnSense how would I filter spam with it?
in reply to Shimitar

irmadlad
irmadlad
• •

lemmy.world/post/45508262/2317…

ETA: I know what opnsense is, I have never used it so I am unaware of all of the packages it can run.

Spam blocking in 2026 - Lemmy.World

Lemmy
lemmy.world
This entry was edited (2 hours ago)
in reply to Shimitar

neidu3
neidu3
• •
It's been a while since I selfhosted my email, but I found it pretty efficient to set up a spam filter that periodically logged into my Gmail address and used its spam folder to train a bayes classifier.
in reply to Shimitar

Björn
Björn
• •

rspamd is used nowadays. Add sieve filtering to automatically move mails with a 7.0 or higher to a spam-folder. Manually move mails there that haven't been detected and move mails out of the spam folder that have been falsely detected (personally don't have any false positives with rspamd).

Then set up bayes learning with rspamd, either when mails are moved between folders or every few hours.

in reply to Björn

Shimitar
Shimitar
• •
Do you have documentation or references on how to setup rspamd?
in reply to Shimitar

Björn
Björn
• •
I just googled something. Don't remember what I ended up on. Probably some blog post combined with rspamd's website. It depends on your mailserver anyways.
in reply to Shimitar

MatSeFi
MatSeFi
• •
I definitively also observe the recent increase of spam (mostly on info@domain) however spamassassin (after some training) does a decent job sorting the trash out. Also I use a unique email address for each website I register, this way a lot of spam was removed by blocking an email-address I've used for login to facebook 10 years ago.
in reply to Shimitar

ikidd
ikidd
• •
Rspamd seems to be common, it's included in the mailcow stack and others. Seems to work pretty good, I've been on Mailcow for several years now with no major spam issues after I dialed it up a bit.
in reply to Shimitar

abeorch
abeorch
•
@YunoHost :disability_flag: - / #yunohost has email hosting with dovecot and #spamhaus configured in it. There were some issues with spamhaus when running version 11 on vps but i read v12 fixed them.
#yunohost #spamhaus @YunoHost :disability_flag:

Selfhosted reshared this.

⇧