Stop Spam in Webmail

# Posted Dec 1, 10:19am

This document shows you how to configure your webmail account so that all of the Junk mail that you receive is automatically moved out of your Inbox into a seperate folder so you can concentrate on the email that deserves your attention.

So, I log into webmail, and see that I've got 4 messages in my Inbox. They're all from one of the coolest guys I know, one of them is read and I know the other two are new messages. The fourth, however, is Rigoberto is trying to sell me some high-grade pharmaceuticals to fix what doesn't ail me. Irritating.

Let's click on the Folders link.

I'm going to create a folder called "Junk" that I'm going to have the server dump all of my spam into, so it doesn't crowd up my Inbox. Type in "Junk" and click "Create."

With the Folder created, I know want to click on "Options" to setup my filter to move the spam.

On the Options screen, I want to choose the link in the bottom right, "Message Filters."

Let's make sure that the rules are applied to "Only unread messages," so that the filter doesn't go through every message I have each time I load my Inbox, just my new ones. Once I've selected that and clicked "Save", I want to create the actual filter itself by clicking on "New."

I want to match Subject, and I want contains to contain "*****SPAM*****" (without the quotes). *****SPAM***** is a special flag that the server prepends to the subject line when it thinks a message is spam - it's over 99% accurate in determining messages that are spam and which messages aren't. I also want to select "Junk" as the folder for the "Move to:" value. Click "Submit" when done.

Okay, we'll just look over the rule, make sure that it's good, and the click "Done."

I'm taken back to my Inbox, and wonder of wonders, the spam isn't in my Inbox anymore. Nice! It isn't deleted, however. I can see my Junk messages by clicking on the "Junk" folder that I created earlier.

There it is. Now, the reason that I simply moved the spam into the Junk folder is that remember how I said that the spam catcher is 99% accurate? There may be times when a legitimate mail is mistakenly marked as spam, and I wouldn't necessarily want to delete everything automatically. This gives me a way of filtering the suspected spams out, and I can then peruse them all at once to double-check that everything really is spam and can be safely deleted.

That's it. Just make sure you clean out your Junk mailbox, as messages in that mailbox still count against your mailbox quota, and you wouldn't want to start bouncing legitimate mail because your Junk folder is overflowing.