How to - use the email spam filter
MyOffice email works with third party spam filters but you might find it more effective to use the inbuilt
filter in MyOffice. It gives you a great deal of control over the filter mechanism and allows you to fine
tune filtering for your own particular needs.
Any email classified as spam will go to your Quarantine folder ... so you can view it in case it contains
a genuine email.
To activate the spam filter
In the main email window click the Tools menu and select the Spam Filter option.
This opens the Spam Filter window. Click the Enable Spam Filter checkbox to enable the settings.
EXAMPLE - Spam Filter window
Emails from contacts aren't spam
The first tip when using the filter is to create contacts in MyOffice for those people from whom you are likely to
receive emails on a regular basis. This will include contacts such as clients and suppliers. You would always want to receive
emails from these contacts and to ensure this you would click the checkbox called 'Emails from Email Addresses stored in
Contacts are never spam'. This will prevent emails sent from stored contacts from ever being classified as spam ... so
you can be confident that they will go to your inbox.
A nice feature in MyOffice is the ability to right-click on an email and 'add sender to contacts'. This sets up
a contact with the email address already completed in the contact window. You can fill the other details in later.
So, if you find a genuine email in the Quarantine folder and you want to avoid future emails from that person going to Quarantine,
just right-click and 'add sender to contacts'. Future emails from that person will never again be classified as spam.
How the spam calculation works
The spam filter works using a points system. Every email is analysed for different characteristics and points are added for
each of the characteristics identified. An overall total is arrived at and this is compared with the Spam Filter
Threshold.
If the total exceeds the threshold, the email is classified as spam and is placed in your Quarantine folder.
The Spam Filter Threshold is the first slider bar in the Spam Filter window. If you use a Low setting you will find
that more emails are classified as spam. If you use a High setting you are less likely to have emails classified as spam.
The default setting for the threshold is 7 and this is a good place to start. If you find that you are receiving too much spam
in your inbox try lowering the setting to 6 and so on ... but remember that the threshold setting works in conjunction with the
other settings.
The spam characteristics that build up the points system are controlled by the remaining slider bars.
The HTML Links in Email setting counts the number of links in the HTML code. Typically, spam emails have links to other sites.
The Banned Words setting counts the number of banned words and
weights each word as low, medium or high. Banned words are discussed below in more
detail.
The English Spelling Check counts words that are spelt incorrectly.
If you regularly receive emails in a language other than English, this setting should
be set to the lowest sensitivity.
The Received by Correct Recipient setting checks for emails that
have not been sent directly to you (i.e. that you have received as a BCC recipient)
or use a 'generated' form of your name.
The Own Signature Present setting looks for the presence of your
signature in emails. When someone replies to one of your emails, these mails will
often contain your own signature. If the filter finds your signature in an email,
it is very unlikely to be spam. The higher the sensitivity for this item, the less
likely an email containing your signature is to be considered spam.
The HTML Tables in Email setting looks for HTML tables in emails.
Spam emails often use tables to lay out pictures and also to obfuscate the words
within the mail.
The default setting for all the above is 10. If you find that genuine emails are
being classified as spam you should experiment with lowering one or more sliders
to reduce the sensitivity.
Banned Words
The Banned Words list allows you to build up a list of words that the spam filter
will search for in emails. You can specify 3 different values for each word - Low,
Medium and High. The filter calculation allocates points relative to these values.
Higher points are also awarded if the banned word appears in the email subject.
MyOffice comes with a pre-defined list of the most common spam words e.g. Viagra.
You should add to this list to fine tune it to your own requirements. Avoid banning
short words such as 'sex' because this string of characters can be part of a longer
word e.g.Middlesex
EXAMPLE - Banned Words