A method, system, and computer program product for scanning incoming emails reduces the server resources needed, which improves server throughput and reduces costs. A method for processing incoming email messages comprised the steps of scanning incoming email messages to obtain an address of a sender of each incoming email message and to determine whether the email message is spam, for each email message that is determined to be spam, incrementing a count of email messages that are spam for a sender of the email message, determining that a count of email messages that are spam for a sender of an email message has exceeded a threshold, and thereafter, discarding all incoming email messages from the sender for which the count of email messages that are spam for a sender of an email message has exceeded a threshold without scanning the email messages to determine whether they are spam.