lm looking for an alternative to boxtrapper.

basically a spam system that does the following:

blocks spam (of course)
requires users to validate their email addresses before being whitelisted
possibly has a web-interface for validation.

seems the term for this is Sender Address Verification (SAV) thats the kind of system lm looking for.

I've seen a few alternatives but can't remember all the names off hand, though I think 'Spam Assassin' might do this too. At the very least it would complement Boxtrapper:

http://spamassassin.apache.org/

l was actually hoping to disable it completely, l believe spamassasin or boxtrapper is causing emails on server to mess up by turning local emails into spam because they arnt arriving.

in fact the issue l have is when l use Vbulletin lm having problems like the following example.

domain: example.com
webmaster email no-reply@example.com
my account email: admin@example.com

for some reason regardless of my settings the emails and notifications, even diagnostic emails DONT send to my admin@example.com yet if l test using another email like my gmail account or a domain not associated with the server it works fine... Vbulletin tell me its most likely a server problem the Host tells me is a Vbulletin problem and to re-install.. which l cant to tbh because l dont wanna mess around with 20,000+ posts or members.

Hmmm I hate those problems, though I have experienced issues with vBulletin failing to issue activation codes and me needing to execute the request manually to resolve that. Otherwise the problem with server-side e-mail is that end-users can't really see the server activity unless we have direct access to the e-mail server log, which I've never had.

Also, be aware that on most servers when you erase an old address then the next address you make may actually occupy the old account association even if it has a different name. So it might be worth making a couple of new e-mails and then trying the most recent new address to test with and see if it improves.

There are also third party e-mail activation systems, though they normally go through a webmail style interface and require an additional monthly fee, albeit not too expensive.

As a side note, I have found that SPAM block/black lists just love banning automated forum e-mails. ISPreview has in the past had its forum master address blocked by some lists and I’ve needed to change it.

indeed, hence why l would like to do it my side so l have control over the system.

on the upside lve just installed something called CSF (Configserver Firewall) and after spending a few hours at it lve got a reasonable security rating, just need a few more modules installed and ld be ready for most hack attacks on the server, only thing lm waiting on is the host to change the SSH ports, l am however especially happy l finally got around to setting it up so we had to use Auth Keys rather than having to keep the ssh open, really love the lack of password typing now!