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Managing your email with the configuration tool and filters

If you find that the automated Spam Management tool is not providing ample filtering of your mail, you may also use the Email Configuration Tool to tailor email server filtering to your specific needs. You can use this feature to manage incoming email before it gets to your inbox. This is a great way to handle unsolicited email (also known as Spam) and allows you to manage large amounts of email while picking your own criteria to sort on on. You can combine the use of Spam Management and personal server email filtering for more flexibilty. If you use a folder named Tagged-Spam to receive all suspected spam, both spam tagged by Spam Management and that picked by your other filters can be automatically deleted after it is more than 15 days old. Experienced users should consider fine tuning server filters.

Filters are automated rules for sorting and handling email. It may help you to think of two basic types of filters:

1. Those that sort email based on parts of the header such as: From:, To:, Cc:, Subject:, Any Recipient, Any Header.
2. Those that sort on words and phrases in the body of a message.

Guidelines for Server Filters

Do not set up filters to delete messages automatically. Email deleted by filters cannot be recovered.
Filters intercept email before it gets to your Inbox. If someone sends email to several addresses including yours, but only the other people receive it, you may have set up filters which throw away your good email by mistake. When attachments are sent with email, they are encoded as text characters which follow the body of the message. So if you have filters which say - "if I see these characters anywhere in a message then delete" - you can delete a message and attachments before they reach your inbox, because the encoding process *has generated* characters that match the filter.

Adding a filter which looks like this can prevent you from receiving important email even though the original attachment does not contain the word.

If you already have created such filters you should remove them. First, log into the Email Account Management Tool. Next, click View your filters. A working filter which deletes email will resemble this:

If you want to Remove a Filter you will have two options. One is to remove individual filters by clicking on the delete button to the left of the filter.

If you do this, the filter is deleted once you Logout of the email configuration tool.

If you choose to Delete All Filters, you must confirm this:

by clicking Yes, Delete All My Filters.

• Test filters by sending email to yourself with and without the key phrases and attachments to make sure they work the way you expect them to.
• Also, be careful when using filters to forward to an address. Just as when deleting, messages are not saved in any way in your account. In additon, you must not harass others by sending them messages they do not want.
• The folders you use or create are IMAP folders. They are not local folders on your own machine. They are on the server and can be seen and used by ITS Webmail and Pine, in addition to Eudora, or Netscape if you have set these up for IMAP.
• Be sure to check folders you use with filters regularly. They use server space, and you can miss messages.
• Filtering via the Email Configuration Tool is independent of what email program you use. Your own computer does not have to be turned on. You do not have to be running Eudora, nor logged in and using PINE for these filters to work.
• It's very easy to delete, change, or add new filters. They start to work immediately. You don't have to wait for a day, or ask someone to approve them. How you handle incoming email -- what you see, what you keep, where you put it -- is completely up to you.

Setting up Server Filters

First open the Email Configuration Tool and enter your netid and password where prompted.

Click Continue at the verification screen,

You will be authorized to use the tool for 5 minutes. (Hint: if you think you will be doing something complex; use an editor such as Notepad in Windows or SimpleText on a Mac to prepare text before entering the Email Configuration Tool. Then you can copy and paste what you need very quickly).

Here are main menus of the Email Configuration Tool:

and the Mail Filtering option.

Here's a filter to sort out email where Any Header contains hanmail.cn and move it to a folder named "may-be-spam". First, I add the folder may-be-spam, since I don't have one. Email deleted by filters cannot be recovered. We recommend that you use filters to deliver messages to a folder for review, so that you do not delete email you want accidently.

Next, create the filter:

Here is the result:

Don't click "Add This Filter" more than once! If you do you can accidently overwrite all your filters, deleting them.

This filter would pick up messages where the domain hanmail.cn appeared anywhere in the header such as From: toner_cartridges@hanmail.cn or Received: ...from mordor_mx.hanmail.cn. Domain filtering can be very powerful if you are sure that you don't want any email from a domain getting to your inbox. Using Any Header contains with a small number domains or parts of a domains that you have repeatedly received unwanted email from, will sort out those messages so that they can be dealt with quickly and easily. Such as example.com

 

Remember to use one filter per domain, word, or character for the best results. Combinations behave unpredictably.

Here's another filter to select email from any address where the message body contains the word ham and deliver it to the "Suspicious" folder. This filter would also pick up messages containing words such as Gotham and hammock. After you add each filter, a list of of all the filters you have active will be displayed. You can also display this list at any time during your session by clicking View Filters.

 

Click this link for more detailed examples of how to block messages with unwanted words or characters (including pornography) in the subject or message body.

Fine Tuning Server Filters

Use these guidelines to fine tune Central Email server filters. For the advanced user, here are some additional links. Bear in mind that for most purposes, a simple list works better and is easier to troubleshoot. Also, not everyone will want to filter the same things. A student or scholar of Asian languages won't want to kilter out .kr (Korea) or special characters. A person with legitimate dealings with a company won't want to blanket delete or filter all mail from that company's mailservers.

• Formulas for Filtering (Courtesy of ITS Security)

• Keep your number of filters as small as possible and try to work with the general content of any header, or patterns in the message body, rather than focusing on individual addresses or individual fields.

• Don't delete spam automatically with server filters. It's too easy to make mistakes, and you can't restore the email because it's never been in the system long enough to be backed up. Instead, create a bulk-mail folder, and send suspected spam there. Then, check it once a week for things to discard. You might want to use the name "Tagged-Spam" or "Suspected-Spam" so that it stands out.

  Filters intercept email before it gets to your Inbox. If someone sends email to several addresses including yours, but only the other people receive it, you may have set up filters which throw away your good email by mistake. When attachments are sent with email, they are encoded as text characters which follow the body of the message. So if you have filters which say - "if I see these characters anywhere in a message then delete" - you can delete a message and attachments before they reach your inbox, because the encoding process *has generated* characters that match the filter.

  Adding a filter which looks like this can prevent you from receiving important email even though the original attachment does not contain the word.

  

  If you already have created such filters you should remove them using the instructions above.
  

• The order in which you filter affects efficiency, as does having relatively few filters that match general spam characteristics. Filters are parsed top down. To be effective, efficient, and avoid conflicts, filter in this order:
  

1. Filter from headers, before filtering from the message body.
   
2. Filter specific addresses in headers next.
3. Filter international characters such as "Ç" from t he header and body next.
4. Filter individual words from the header and body last.

• Don't click "Add This Filter" more than once! If you do you can accidently overwrite all your filters, deleting them.

Examples:

Filters work best on header contents, not headers themselves. The receipe below will fail to deliver spam to the folder.

If Any Header contains "X-Potential-SPAM-Data:" then deliver to folder "spam"

If you match the contents of one of our spam headers, your recipe will be effective. A filter of "Any Header contains 'relayed through a known spam server'" would work.

if any header contains rrabbit@toon.com then deliver to filter suspected_spam
if any header contains Ç then deliver to folder suspected_spam
if message body contains Ç then deliver to folder suspected_spam
if any header contains porn then deliver to folder suspected_spam
if message body contains porn then deliver to folder suspected_spam

Some spam will always get through regardless as the senders get smarter all the time. However this scheme will trap many of the more common types for now and protect the inbox.

Filtering Pornography

To reduce the amount of pornography-related spam you receive, use filters for "any header contains" and "message body contains" on these criteria:

Individually filter on words you consider offensive, (such as those that rhyme with duck).

Individually filter on these precursor words: "hardcore", "porn", and "uncensored".

Filtering Non-English Spam

If you normally correspond using non-English characters you need to be careful of this.

To reduce the amount of non-English spam you receive in your inbox, use filters for "any header contains" and "message body contains" on these international characters:

Related links