Email Filtering

Until recently, only individuals, companies, or internet service providers who ran their own mailservers were able to use the methods documented below to filter with APEWS. Email users who did not have this capability, but had access to a "shell" account, could use SpamBouncer for an alternative method of filtering using DNS lookups and APEWS.

We also recommend that all people bothered by spam contact their internet service providers and request they add some sort of filtering or spam-tagging to their incoming email systems. Several spam filtering choices are listed and discussed on the APEWS FAQ page.

DNS lookup based filtering

The preferred way to automatically use the APEWS list to filter email is by using a DNS query based system (DNSBL + RHSBL). This works by taking the IP address / hostname of the incoming email server (the SMTP mailserver talking to your mailserver) and checking it against a DNS zone version of the APEWS list. If the IP address / hostname is found, your mailserver can either discard the email or bounce it back to the sender, or tag it as possible spam.

USING APEWS ZONES BY DNS
(recommendet for small companies only):

l1.apews.org (RHSBL - Domains only)

example.com.l1.apews.org

This will return a value of [127.0.0.2] if the DOMAIN (in this case [example.com]) is in APEWS L1.
Please note that l1.apews.org lists DOMAINS only.

l2.apews.org (LHSBL - CIDR only)

2.0.0.127.l2.apews.org

This will return a value of [127.0.0.2] if the IP number (in this case [127.0.0.2]) is in APEWS L2.
Please note that l2.apews.org lists CIDR's only.

DOWNLOAD APEWS ZONES FOR RBLDNS
(recommendet for medium and big companies):

APEWS Level1 (RHSBL - It lists domains only)

rsync -avz rsync.apews.org::APEWS/l1.apews.org /path-to-your-rbldns/

APEWS Level2 (DNSBL - It lists IP's and CIDR's only)

rsync -avz rsync.apews.org::APEWS/l2.apews.org /path-to-your-rbldns/