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Michiana Freenet Spam Control Instructions

           Michiana Freenet is proud to announce our new and improved spam blocking tool. Our new spam blocker is user configurable and easy to use. Please point your web browser to our secure web site at https://ssl.michiana.org/spam/ and login with your username and password and configure your Spam Control Email account. Following is a brief explanation of how to set up your new spam blocker configuration.

           In the first section (green box below) of the configuration tool , you will see 'Allow/Deny Address' List. This is comparable to the "allow" a legitimate user to send you mail from the old spam blocking system. The difference is you are now in control of your own settings. You are not contributing to a global list. This is just who you want to allow. And now you can block/deny a specific sender from sending you email too. All you need to do is type an email address in the 'address' field, select Allow or Deny and then click 'Add New Address'. Your 'allowances' and 'denys' are then listed just above (blue box below.)

           Scanning down the page you will come to General Settings (yellow box below.) These settings control how you mail is filtered. The first and most important setting is 'Required Hits'. Required Hits controls how aggressive your spam filtering should be. Basically this tells the spam blocker how many spam characteristics the email must contain to be considered spam. Spam characteristics include things like commonly used spam phrases i.e. 'This is not spam', and other routing information that is not readily available to the user. The default setting is 5 which is rather aggressive and may lead to a high number of legitimate mails being labeled as spam. The greater this value the less aggressive Spam Control will be. Most spam mails have a score of 5 to 16, so adjust your configuration appropriately. If you find your legitimate emails marked as SPAM raise this value. The other options under general settings are for advanced users and probably should not be changed without a specific reason.

           The final step is making a change to your email program.

Microsoft Outlook:

  1. Go to Tools->Rules Wizard...
  2. Click 'New...' (on the top right)
  3. Choose 'Check messages when they arrive'
  4. Click 'Next'.
  5. Check 'With specific words in the message header'.
  6. Click on 'specific words'.
  7. Type in: [SPAM: (this will catch all messages with this in the subject)
  8. Click 'Ok'.
  9. Click 'Next'.
  10. Check 'Move it to the specified folder'.
  11. Click on 'specified'.
  12. Highlight an existing folder, or create a new one.
  13. Click 'Ok'.
  14. Click 'Next'.
  15. Click 'Next'. (Again, unless you want to add exceptions.)
  16. Give the rule a name. (The default is what you typed for specific words above.)
  17. Check 'Turn on this rule'. (You may or may not want to check 'Run this rule on my Inbox now'.)
  18. Click 'Finish'.

Outlook Express:

  1. Open Outlook Express as you would to check your email.
  2. Then click on the tools menu. Click on Message Rules then click mail. You will now see the message rules configuration.
  3. Under 'Select Conditions For Your Rule', check 'Where The Subject Line Contains Specific Words'.
  4. Under 'Select Action For Your Rule' check 'Move It To The Specified Folder'.
  5. Under 'Rule Description' click contains specific words.
  6. In the box that appears click in the textbox under 'Type Specific Words or Phrases' and click 'Add'.
  7. Type in [SPAM:  exactly as it is typed here and click 'Add'.
  8. Click 'OK'.
  9. Now click the 'Underlined Specified'. In the box that appears click on 'Deleted Items' and click 'OK'.
  10. Now click 'OK' in the 'Message Rules' box.
  11. You should now see 'Message Rules #1' with a checkbox beside it. Click 'OK' here.

Eudora:

  1. Open Eudora as you would to check your email.
  2. Next check for new messages and click on a message that you want to filter.
  3. If you have a [SPAM: email right-click once on that email and then click on 'Make Filter'. The 'Make Filter' dialog box opens. First make sure the default checkbox for 'Incoming' is checked.
  4. Next click the radio button below labeled 'Subject.' The subject line from the selected email will already be in the box to the right.
  5. Then in the 'Action' section click on the 'Delete Message (Transfer To Trash)' radio button and the email will be deleted. (You will still be able to review every message but you don't have to. When you empty your trash box the messages are deleted.) Finally click 'Create Filter' and the job is done!

Netscape:

Message filters allow you to manage and organize your messages. You can create message filters that Netscape Mail uses to automatically perform certain actions on incoming messages based on criteria you specify. For example, you can create a message filter that automatically files incoming messages in a particular folder.

    If you are not already viewing the Message Filters dialog box, begin from the Mail window:
    1. Open the Edit menu and choose Message Filters. You see the Message Filters dialog box.
    2. If you have multiple mail accounts, choose the one to which you want to apply the filter.
    3. Click New. You use the Filter Rules dialog box to specify the types of messages to act on, and the action you want the filter to perform.
    4. Type a name for the filter.
    5. Select the matching option you want Mail to use: "all of the following conditions" (criteria) you choose, or "at least one" of the conditions.
    6. Use the drop-down lists to choose the search criteria (for example, "Subject," "Sender," "contains," "doesn't contain") and then type the text or phrase you want to match.
    7. To restrict your filter to messages that only match a certain priority, choose an option for priority from the drop-down list.
    8. Click More to add criteria and Fewer to remove them.
    9. Use the drop-down list to choose the action you want the filter to perform on the messages (for example, Move to Folder).
    10. Choose a destination folder in which to store the messages, or create a new folder.
    11. Click OK to confirm your settings.
    To manage your filters, begin from the Mail window:
    1. Open the Edit menu and choose Message Filters. You see the Message Filters dialog box.
    2. If you have multiple mail accounts, choose the one to which you want to apply the filter.
    3. Choose from the following:
      • To turn a filter on or off: Click the dot to the right of the filter name to enable it (diamond), or click it again to turn it off.
      • To edit a filter: Select the filter name and click Edit (or double-click the filter name).
      • To delete a filter: Select the filter name and click Delete.
      • To change the order in which filters are applied: In the filter list, click a filter's name, and click "Move Up" or "Move Down" to move it.

      Note: Filters are applied to each incoming message in the order you choose, until a filter action results in the message being deleted or moved to a different folder.

    4. Click OK when you are done managing your filters. If you created a new filter, it begins filtering incoming messages as soon as you click OK.

    Note: If you delete a folder that you've been using to store filtered messages, the filter will no longer work. Incoming messages that match the filter criteria will appear in your Inbox. If you rename or move the folder, the filter will automatically update to use the renamed or moved folder.

    Tip: Filters don't apply to existing messages. If you have existing messages that you want to move to another folder, you can search for those messages and then file them into the other folder.

    Congratulations you are now setup for the new and improved spam blocking tool.

(Begin Spam Control screen shot display.)
(The form below is a non-operational version.)
(Table background colors used to highlight instructions are not a part of actual controls.)

>>>Freenet Customers login into real controls here: https://ssl.michiana.org/spam/ <<<


Logged in as: (whatever your username is) Logout

Spam Control Settings
From here you can change the settings that control how the Spam Control will mark your e-mail.

Allow / Deny Addresses List (Whitelist/Blacklist)
Below is your list of sender addresses that are either Allowed or Denied passage regardless of the Spam score.

Address Type Action
support@michiana.org Allow Delete  Edit
software@gdsoft.com Deny Delete  Edit

Add New Address
Address:
Type: Allow   Deny

General Settings
Required Hits Once all Spam Control tests have been run, the resulting score is matched against this value, and if greater than this value, the e-mail message is marked as spam.
 
The default value for Required Hits is 5, which is quite aggressive.
A value of 10 will produce fewer false positives. The average SPAM score is around 15 to 16.  Setting this to 99 will effectively turn SPAM filtering OFF alltogether.
Rewrite Subject Line
Spam Control will re-write the subject line of your e-mail that has detected to be spam by prefixing the original subject with: [SPAM:SA]. To turn off this feature, un-check this option.
Report in Header
Spam Control will create a report when it detects an e-mail message to be spam. This report is normaly prepended to the e-mail message. To have the report written as part of the e-mail header, select this option.
Reclaim Email and Attach Original Message
Spam Control can reclaim the body of the email message and attach the original message when it detects an e-mail message to be spam. When this is selected, a report is prepended to the body of the e-mail message. To have the original message attached and the email report written as part of the e-mail body, select this option.
De-HTML Spam
When a e-mail in HTML format is detected as Spam, the Spam Control will convert the message to text. To keep the e-mail in it's original HTML form, de-select this option.
Short Report This options will tell Spam Control to use a shorter Spam report once the message has been found to be spam.
(End Spam Control screen shot display.)