Make SPAM Guardian Filter More Effective

Arquan has listened to customers’ desire for better spam filtering and we have now implemented measures to decrease the dreaded SPAM. In this effort, we aim to save you and your employees’ time and money dealing with less SPAM email. It does, however, take a little bit of interaction on your part to help make the SPAM filter MORE effective.

In this post, we will teach you how to do two things:

1. Train the SPAM filter to be more effective
2. Automatically eliminate / move email labeled ***SPAM***

Train the SPAM Filter To Be More Effective

You can make your SPAM filter MORE effective by “training” the filter to  “learn” what is spam and what is not according to YOU. Create junk_learn and ham_learn Folders Log into your webmail (webmail.yourdomain.com) Click Options > Mail (left column) Click FOLDERS (upper menu bar) Click (drop-down box) CHOOSE ACTION Click CREATE and enter junk_learn Click OK Click CREATE and enter ham_learn Click OK

Create new folders in webmail - Click to zoom Create junk_learn and ham_learn - Click to zoom

Move SPAM To junk_learn Folder — All SPAM messages that you receive (either labeled ***SPAM*** or not) can be  MOVED to the junk_learn folder. The SPAM engine will learn from them every night and will delete them automatically from the server. Click box next to SPAM email(s) Click MESSAGES TO (drop-down box) and select junk_learn Click MOVE (next to drop-drown box)

Using junk_learn - Click to zoom

Using ham_learn - Click to zoom

For Mail Tagged with ***SPAM*** Incorrectly All email that is NOT SPAM that is incorrectly labeled as ***SPAM*** you need to copy them to the ham_learn folder to ‘educate’ the SPAM filter. Click boxes next to the wanted email(s) Click MESSAGES TO (drop-down box) and select ham_learn Click COPY (next to same drop-drown box)

NOTE: as stated in the paragraph above, do not MOVE the messages to ham_learn, just COPY them to the folder because they will be deleted every night.

You must train spam AND ham messages. If you train only spam, the Bayesian filter will not work as accurately.  We recommend taking a few minutes every day and do this until you are comfortable with the accuracy of the filter, then only as needed periodically.

Automatically Move / Delete Labeled ***SPAM***

Once you are comfortable with the accuracy of the filter, you can create a rule to automatically move the mail marked as ***SPAM*** to another folder for you to inspect later, or delete it immediately.

You can create a rule in either webmail or in your local email software (i.e., Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.) to automatically move or delete the items with ***SPAM*** in the Subject.

Here’s how to move or delete the messages automatically: Click Options > Filters (left menu) Click Filter Rules (top menu) Click the NEW RULE button Provide a Rule Name (we recommend ‘Move SPAM’ or ‘Delete SPAM’) Leave ‘All of the following’ selected Click ‘Subject’ (drop-down box), then ‘Contains’ (drop-down box), and enter ***SPAM*** in the text box In the Do This section, select either ‘Deliver to folder’ or ‘Delete Immediately’ If you chose ‘Deliver to folder’ select the folder you want the labeled SPAM to be delivered to Click ‘Stop checking if this rule matches’ checkbox Click SAVE

Create filter - Click to zoom Create filter 2 - Click to zoom

* Please note: you can use IMAP with your email to create the junk_learn or ham_learn folders if you prefer, we just showed you how to do it via webmail.

** This post uses screenshots from Horde 4.3.6 webmail