Spam Filtering in Outlook Express 5 for Macintosh- Advanced

Abstract

This document is designed to assist ECE affiliates in setting up mail filters to decrease the amount of "junk mail" (also known as "spam") viewed in their Inbox. This "Advanced" form of spam filtering allows you to specify the spam score that is used to filter and allows you to create rules to prevent specific e-mail messages from being tagged as "spam."

Part 1: Adjusting the spam tolerance level

UCSD's spam filtering system uses an algorithm to determine the likelihood that a given piece of mail is "spam," based on a variety of criteria. It assigns each message a score, representing the probability that the message in question is spam. UCSD's system will tag a message as "spam" if it receives a score of 5.0 or above. You may wish to select a score other than five for your filtering needs. The score is represented in the mail message graphically in the X-Spam-Level header -- the number of asterisks (*) in the line denote the " spam score." Choosing a lower value will result in a greater volume of spam being directed to your Spam folder, but it will also increase the likelihood of a legitimate mail message accidentally being sorted as spam. To determine the level at which you feel comfortable filtering, we recommend that you examine the assigned score on a variety of messages in your inbox. To view this information you will need to look in the mail headers of your e-mail, which you can do by double-clicking on the e-mail, click on the View pulldown menu and select Internet Headers - the spam score usually appears near the bottom.

Select Tools and then click on Rules. Click on New. Type Spam in the Rule Name field. Click on All messages and select Specific header. In the text field next to Specific header, type X-Spam-Level In the text field next to Contains, type Level and the number of *'s equal to the number you decided upon in Part 1. Click on Change color and select Move message. Click on Inbox and select Choose folder.

Click on New. In the New Folder window, type Spam in the field labeled Name of new folder. Check the box labeled Create as subfolder of Inbox and click Choose to continue. Click on OK.

From now on, all incoming e-mail which appears to be "spam" will be automatically moved to the new folder you created. Note that it is possible that legitimate e-mail may be accidentally marked as spam, so it is recommended that you periodically check the contents of this folder to ensure that this has not occurred before deleting its contents.

Part 2: Creating exceptions to spam filtering for commonly received mail

If you would like to override the spam filters for a particular address (for example, if your friend gblufin@hotmail.com sends you e-mail that is constantly filtered into your Spam folder) to prevent it from being filtered out, you need to create what is called an exception rule. The following will take you through the additional steps needed to set up these exception rules.

Click on if any criteria are met and select if all criteria are met. Click on Contains and select Does not contain. Type the address which you have chosen to exempt from filtering in the box to the right. Click OK to finish.

From now on, all incoming e-mail which appears to be "spam" will be automatically moved to the new folder you created. Note that it is possible for legitimate e-mail to be accidentally marked as spam. It is recommended that you periodically check the contents of this folder to ensure that this has not occurred before deleting its contents.

Questions

If you have any further questions or encounter problems while attempting to set up spam filter, send an e-mail message to ecehelp@ece.ucsd.edu