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Spam and Junk Mail: Detection and Removal
You can also use
filters to fine tune spam and junk mail detection. The iSchool comes with
a built in spam detector, Spam Assassin. If Spam Assassin thinks that a
message is spam, then it will flag it as such in the headers. Go to your
iSchool inbox. Open (double click) a message. Go to the menu bar.
Choose View then Headers then
All.
If you see a header that says “X-Spam-Flag: YES” then Spam Assassin thinks that this message is spam. We can filter out messages that Spam Assassin thinks are spam by using a specialized filter.
As before, go to the tools then message filters and then select your iSchool account. Then you should select “New…” and name your filter “X-SPAM-FLAG”. For your filter, select “Customize…”.
This will bring you to a new screen that says “New message header:” In this box type “X-Spam-Flag”, then click ok.
Now in the first drop down menu, you will be able to select “X-Spam-Flag”,
then in the second “Contains”, then in the empty box “Yes”. Then under “Perform these actions:” choose move to Junk folder underneath your iSchool account.
Now whenever Spam Assassin thinks a message is junk mail, it will move it to the Junk folder, and you will not have to deal with it.
The methodology employed here will also work with other server side spam filters - check all of your headers to find the right customizable filter term to use.
In Thunderbird, there are additional methods that can be used to pick up spam messages. Thunderbird has an adaptive spam filter that, based on user responses (that’s you!), will alter its metric for determining which messages are spam. Simply select a message that you consider to be junk mail and click on the Junk button up top to label it as such. Thunderbird (based on your responses) will begin to preemptively label messages spam. If it labels a message incorrectly, simple click on the Junk button once more to show Thunderbird that the selected email is normal.
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