WebSpawner.com Blog

Unsolicited bulk email, known as “spam,” is an unfortunate fact of life for all email users. While there is no foolproof way to prevent or eliminate spam, there are some things you can do to reduce the problem. Today we’ll go over how you can set up Filters in your WebSpawner WebMail account to keep many unwanted spam emails from clogging up your Inbox.

To begin, login to your WebSpawner account and then click the WebMail icon under the orange Add-Ons tab in the Member Menu, as shown below. WebMail is available to all WebSpawner Members with Enhanced accounts. If you haven’t upgraded your account you won’t see the WebMail link; click the Enhance Your Site link instead to upgrade and add WebMail, Image Galleries, Unlimited Page Creation, Opinion Polls and many other great features to your website.

After you’ve clicked on the WebMail link, the WebMail window will appear. Click the Options link on the left side menu.

In the Options screen, click the Filters link.

The Filters screen lists any existing Filters. To add a new one, click the Add New Filter link on the right as depicted below.

The screen will refresh to show a blank Filter creation form like the following one.

The Filter form consists of 3 areas: Filter Name and Description (optional); Rules, to specify the criteria for which incoming messages the Filter will catch; and Action, to indicate what should be done with those messages caught by the Rules.

Complete the form to create a Filter. For example, let’s assume that you are tired of receiving spam emails offering you “male enhancement” products like Viagra. Additionally, you keep receiving emails with the Subject line “The Pharmacy America Trusts” but you don’t trust the sender one bit. You can create a Filter to prevent these types of messages from arriving in the Inbox.

Enter a Filter Name like “Spam” and keep the Enable Filter box checked, and if you like enter a Filter Description (this is optional).

Under Rules click to select Filter messages where any of the following rules apply.

Complete the “If” statement using the pull-down menus and entering text in the box at the right to read “If Message Body contains viagra” and keep the Case Sensitive box unchecked. This rule will snare any incoming email that contains the word “viagra” in the message.

Click Add another rule at the right side, and a second “If” line will appear. Adjust this one to read “If Message Body contains male enhancement” to catch those instances also.

Click Add another rule again and complete the third “If” line to read “If Subject exactly matches The Pharmacy America Trusts.”

Specify the Action to be taken, by clicking an option. Delete simply deletes the message, while Reject will delete the message and also send a “delivery failure” response back to the sender, which makes it appear that your email address was invalid and may cause the sender to stop sending email to your address.

When you’ve completed the form as shown in the example below, click the Update Filter button to save and activate the Filter.

The screen will refresh to show your new Spam Filter listed, along with any other Filters you have created, as shown below.

You can make changes to your Filter at any time by clicking on its name (”Spam”) in the List… for example, to add additional Rules to catch and reject other types of unwanted emails (always click the Update Filter button when finished to save your changes). A single Filter can contain many Rules but can have only one Action.

You can also click Add New Filter at the right of the Filter List to add another Filter with different criteria and Action options. You can create many Filters for different purposes.

A few closing suggestions:

• Be careful when setting Rules; if they are too general the Filter may inadvertently catch and act upon some email that you would prefer to have arrive in your Inbox.
• Even with multiple Rules some unwanted messages may show in your Inbox from time to time… you can add new Rules to your Spam Filter to prevent them from recurring.
• Don’t open unwanted spam emails, and if you do, definitely do not open any attachments sent by users that you are unfamiliar with… your computer could catch a virus.
• Don’t reply to senders of spam emails, and don’t click “unsubscribe” links if present… doing so just confirms for the sender that your email address is valid and the message was received.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 14th, 2007 at 10:14 pm and is filed under User Guide. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.