Spam filtering
settings are performed through the Webmail system, even
if you will be using an email client such as Outlook
or Eudora to read email.
Specific instructions
for creating a filter in Outlook Express to put incoming
spam in a spam folder are available by following
this link. Additional tutorials for other email clients
will be available soon.
Log in to
Webmail
You can log in
to your email account from any of the main pages within
the www.oklahoma-isp.net web site. Just enter your user
name and password in the spaces provided in the top-right
corner, and click on the Login button.
- If your email
address is under the oklahoma-isp.net or okiemail.net
domains, log in with just the user name portion of your
email address (the part before the @ symbol) and your
password.
- If your account
is under your own domain name, log in with your entire
email address as the user name (e.g.,
jdoe@johndoesdomain.com) and your password.
Configure
Spam Filtering
Next, you will
want to enable spam filtering and define how you want spam
handled.
- If you plan
to use web mail, create a folder called "spam"
as follows: Click on Folders, type "spam" in
the Create Folder box, then click the Create button:
Click on SpamFilter
from the list of options along the top of the screen. This
will bring you to the spam configuration screen:
Click on the
red
paw-print Filter Status icon to turn the filtering on. The
icon will change to a 
green
paw-print to indicate that the filter is enabled.
If you are setting
up a new account, click on Sign Out in the upper-right corner
of the screen to log out, then log back in again as described
in the steps above. This one-time extra step ensures that
your user account and settings are initialized.
The
Required Hits number refers to a score that is assigned
to each email message based on over 3000 tests for spam
and non-spam indicators. Messages with a score at or above
this value will be flagged as spam and filtered accordingly.
The default setting of 5.5 for is recommended for most users.
-
To
add
[SPAM] or tome other tag to the beginning of the subject
line, click the Rewrite Subject box, then the
Change Settings button. You can modify the Subject
Tag setting if you want to change the subject line
tag to something other than the default.
- If you will
be using web mail, select the "spam" folder
(that you created in a previous step, above) from the
Spam Folder pull-down menu, then click the Change
Settings button. This causes all messages flagged
as spam to be placed in your online spam folder.
- You can also
set the Spam Folder setting to have suspected spam
automatically discarded. For most users, we don't recommend
this option.
-
If you will
be using an email client like Outlook or Eudora to read
mail, you will also need to set up a filter in your
client to sort spam based on the tag inserted in the
subject line, or based on the presence of a "X-Spam-Flag:
YES" line in the message header. An example for
Outlook Express is here. Examples for other email clients
are in development.
The Email
List Management link at the top of the filter settings
screen leads to a different screen which allows you to manually
add or delete specific email addresses or whole email domains
that should be blacklisted (always treated as spam) or whitelisted
(never treated as spam).
- If you use
webmail to read your email, you can click on the links
provided in each email message window to automatically
add the sender's address or domain to the whitelist or
blacklist.
Additional/Advanced
Spam Filter Options
The Defang
Mime option causes any attachments in any email flagged
as spam to be treated as plain text. The drawback to this
option is that if the message was in fact legitimate, the
attachment will have been rendered useless.
The Extended
Reporting option causes more detail on the spam tests
and scoring to be added to the message headers. The additional
information can be used by advanced users to fine-tune the
scoring using the Rules Management screen described
below.
The Rules
Management link leads to a different screen which allows
the various spam or non-spam tests to be scored differently.
We recommend against changing any of the values for these
tests for all but the most advanced users needing to solve
specific problems.
