How to block email from all but specified hosts?

[cryan]

Due to high volumes of spam (especially spam with virus attacments), we've implemented a service from our datacenter in which the MX record for our email server now points to servers at the datacenter that filter email for spam (especially attacments) and only forward clean emails to our Ability Mail Server (version 2.56)

This works very well. However, the datacenter says that we should block mail from all sources other than those two hosts (mx1.earthnet.net and mx2.earthnet.net) via our mailserver settings. I don't see such settings on the admin pages. Does Ability Mail Server support this? Or is there some other way to accomplish this?

Thank you!

[Code Crafters]

You need to update to the latest version 2.62 via http://download.code-crafters.com/ams.exe. This new version contains a new 10 SPAM filter system with an easy to use setup wizard which you should usually set to medium level protection. Bayesian is complicated and must be setup separate to the wizard. Other that Bayesian, and black/white listing all other filters should be set up fine via the SPAM wizard. Its often also a good idea to set the filters to just set the SPAM flag / custom events and then use the SPAM Identifier preset content filter rule to act on the SPAM flag set, modifying this rule as appropriate for your situation. Its usually best to keep all mails and sort them into SPAM / non-SPAM folders so that Bayesian filtering can learn from them as this is the best filter of all and will stop 99.5% of all SPAM once trained. We get over 1000 SPAM mails a day and rarely do any get through our well trained SPAM filter systems on our Ability Mail Server.

[cryan]

I take it from this response that Ability Mail Server does not, in fact, support blocking email from all hosts except ones that you specify.

I don't want virus and malware files to ever reach my servers -- which is far more important than teaching a bayesian filter -- so I guess I'll have to look for a new mail server.

Thanks.

[Code Crafters]

Sorry I didn't fully answer your question. There are really 2 ways you can do this.

1) You can limit your SMTP IP restrictions so that only connections from IPs (or hostnames) you specify can even connect to your SMTP server to deliver mail. Set the Block All then just add the IPs, IP ranges, hostnames etc. that you want to allow.

2) You can use content filtering to control almost anything about your email delivery. If you create a content filter rule something like:

Conditions:
SMTP Hostname DOES NOT CONTAIN "host1.com"
AND SMTP Hostname DOES NOT CONTAIN "host2.com"

Actions:
Delete Email (or move to folder, send copy to an account, whatever you want to do)

This will block email from all senders other than the ones you list here.