[SPAM] Even MORE junk filtering!

junkmail1One added suggestion for improved spam filtering on your inbox. Remember in the previous tutorial where i had you go into your Mail Preferences and edit that junk mail rule? We are going to do something similar to that.

There is a spam filter on the mail server which detects and marks spam by prepending [JUNK MAIL] to the subject on any emails it thinks might be spam.

This rule will watch your inbox for anything with [JUNK MAIL] in the subject and mark it as junk, redirect it to [email protected], and remove it from your inbox, all without you having to do anything. Except set up this one rule.

Let’s do it!

Control Spam With Rules

From within Mail, choose the Mail menu at the top of your screen and select Preferences… (or press Apple+,).

Mail Menu

Next we’ll select Rules (it should be over to the right).

Mail Rules Prefs

If you’re confronted with something like the above then you are on the right track. Yours might not have as much stuff in it, that’s OK. It’s about to get one more. Click Add Rule.

A quick aside: Mail rules are really neat and useful. Basically, you set up an If and a Then. IF any mails matches the criteria you set, THEN something happens to that mail. You determine what that “something” will be. e.g. IF the email subject contains [Buyers], THEN move to a folder called Buyers Team. Maybe it’ll all come together when we do one together…

We are going to recreate the mail rule that i’ve created below.

More junk

0: Fill in the Description. Give this new Rule a name.

1: Leave the first pulldown menu set to “any”.

2: Choose “Subject” from the list.

3: Leave “Contains” the way it is

4: and then enter the following just as you see it into the text field: [JUNK MAIL]

5: Next, we’ll select Move Message

6: into the Junk folder.

7: While we’re at it, we’ll also Redirect Message

8: to: [email protected]

9: Lastly, we’ll Mark as Read. So this offending email will bother us no longer.

The finished product should read like a sentence. “If the Subject Contains [JUNK MAIL] then Move that Message to the Junk mailbox, redirect it to junkmail at peoples dot coop, and mark it as read.”

Click OK.

If asked to apply the new rule….sure! Go for it. Close your Mail Preferences window by clicking once on the red ball in the top left. Now you have two custom mail filters which should significantly reduce the amount of junk you are actually facing in your inbox each day.

Let me know in the comments if you have problems/questions with this tutorial. Let me know too if you’ve had success!

Thanks to Dusty for inadvertently suggesting this tip!

Posted on November 25, 2007 in email, os x, tutorial

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