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Spam Filtering
If you're reading this, you have probably subscribed to Beanbasket's spam and
virus filtering (currently $2 per account per month). This is a state of the art
filtering service that filters out spam,
scams and viruses. When filtering is
initially set up for you, it already has a good idea about what is spam
and what is legitimate email. Once in awhile though, it may incorrectly flag a good message as
spam and vice versa. You can train the filter to help correctly flag future messages,
but if you can tolerate an occasional mistake, there is no need
to.
Training is a simple process involving copying messages into
the appropriate folder, and can be done within your email program (only if you use
the IMAP protocol), or via webmail. It is
described in more detail below.
Also, keep in mind that no spam filter is 100% accurate,
regardless of how well it is trained.
"They just set me up with filtering.
Give me the quick explanation!"
What you need to do:
- Spam and viruses are automatically filtered if you have filtering set up.
You are not required to do anything, but
if you use POP3 (and we do set up filtering this way by default) all spam has the subject
prefixed with * SPAM *, and all viruses have the subject prefixed with * VIRUS *. You will
most likely want to set up "rules" in your email program to place these into a folder like
"Junk" or "Spam". Here is how
you do that in Outlook.
Make sure to check your spam folder regularly for false positives.
Other Important Information:
- You can manage blacklisting and whitelisting of email addresses by logging into
Webmail and going to Options | Spam Filtering
- You will receive a daily summary email of the activity on your account.
- If you exclusively use webmail or IMAP in your email program, your old spam and viruses will be
automatically deleted after 14 days. If you use POP3 (most common), you will manually need to delete spam.
- Make sure to check your Spam folder for misidentified emails! If you are consistently getting
email from a particular person flagged as spam, whitelist them with the tools in
Webmail by going to Options | Spam Filtering.
- Your email program is probably set to use POP3 protocol to check your mail.
You can set your email program to use IMAP (to allow training of the filter), but
you don't have to. Let us know
if you decide to change from IMAP to POP3 or vice versa. Go
here for the basic instructions
on setting up your email program to check mail (with POP3 or IMAP).
- Contact us here if you want us to change your
filtering setup from POP3 to IMAP or vice versa.
How to Set Up Training
from within Your E-mail Program
If you want to train the filter from within your email program...
If you prefer to do any training within your email program (e.g.
Outlook, Thunderbird) you must use the IMAP e-mail protocol (instead of POP3, the
more popular one). To find out about the difference between POP3 and IMAP, see
the Additional Information section below. You may also choose to leave
your email program as is, and use webmail (at http://webmail.beanbasket.com) to
do any training. Remember, you are not required to train the filter.
To switch your email program from POP3 to IMAP, you will need:
- Your e-mail address (me@mydomain.com)
- The name of your incoming and outgoing mail server.
(mail.mydomain.com for both)
- Your username and password (your username is usually
different than your email prefix)
Remove your current POP3 account and set up a new account
using IMAP. For setup instructions to commonly used e-mail programs visit http://www.beanbasket.com/support/.
It is important that you remove the old POP3 account before setting up the IMAP
account. ( Note: If you need to save email from this old POP3 account,
you may have to move that email to another local folder prior to removing the
old account.)
Once you are using IMAP
If your email program is already configured to use IMAP, you
will need to make sure you are "subscribed" to the 'Spam', 'Learn-Spam', 'Learn-Legit', and
'Virus' folders, if they are not already visible as additional subfolders under
the 'Inbox' folder. Subscribing to subfolders ususally just involves right-clicking on the
inbox of your IMAP account and choosing "Subscribe" or something similar.
 Once
your IMAP account is set up correctly (Similar to the picture shown at left),
you will see a separate 'Inbox' tree, containing at the very least, the folders
named 'Spam', 'Learn-Spam', 'Learn-Legit', and 'Virus'. These folders are
described in more detail below.
Beanbasket Webmail
If you have signed up for filtering with us, regardless of
how your email program is set up, you are already set up to train the filter by
using Webmail ( http://webmail.beanbasket.com).
Just follow the instructions in the next section.
The 'Spam', 'Learn-Spam',
'Learn-Legit', and 'Virus' Folders
Once your e-mail program is set up to use the IMAP protocol
to check your e-mail, you will see the additional subfolders within your IMAP
Inbox. These folders are also visible when you are logged in to Webmail.
Folder
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Description
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Inbox
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For IMAP users, only legitimate e-mail is delivered to
this folder. (For POP3 users, all mail is delivered to this folder, but spam
and virus emails have their subject lines prefixed with “* SPAM *” and “*
VIRUS *“.)
|
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Spam
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Once you train the spam filter, this folder will begin to
capture e-mail that it believes is spam. After training, spam will then
bypass your Inbox and be delivered directly to this folder. *You
should not move spam to this folder, unless you don't care that it won't help
train the filter* You may however delete messages from this folder.
Messages in this folder older than 14 days will be automatically deleted for
you.
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Learn-Spam
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If spam mistakenly comes into your Inbox, you can move the
message into this folder to train the filter that it is actually spam. If
you move it to the “Spam” folder instead, no training will take place.
|
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Learn-Legit
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If legitimate mail mistakenly comes into your Spam folder,
you can copy the message here to train the filter that it is actually
legitimate mail.
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Virus
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The virus
filter will automatically place e-mail here if it contains a virus.
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How to Train your Spam Filter (using IMAP or Webmail)
The Beanbasket Spam Filter has been designed to learn what
e-mail should be considered span within you e-mail account. The filter learns
by you teaching it what you consider to be spam.
When
spam comes into your Inbox:
If an e-mail comes into your Inbox that you consider spam, simply
move that e-mail to the 'Learn-Spam' folder. By doing this, you are
telling the spam filter that you consider this e-mail to be spam. Subsequent
e-mails similar to this will automatically be put into the 'Spam' folder. Do
not move spam from your 'Inbox' into the 'Spam' folder. It must go into the 'Learn-Spam'
folder for the spam filter to properly learn that the message is considered
spam.
The spam filter is set to automatically delete mails in your
'Spam' folder after 14 days. You have the option of going in and deleting messages
sooner than that if you wish to.
When a legitimate (good) e-mail comes into your Spam
folder:
If a legitimate e-mail is automatically put into your 'Spam'
folder, copy the e-mail into the 'Learn-Legit' folder.
This can be done in Outlook by holding the Ctrl key while dragging and dropping
the message into the 'Learn-Legit' folder. After copying the e-mail to the 'Learn-Legit'
folder, you may safely move the message to your 'Inbox' or other folder. If
you do not put a copy into the 'Learn-Legit' folder prior to moving the message
into your 'Inbox', the spam filter will not learn that this was actually a
legitimate e-mail, and may still consider subsequent similar e-mails to be
spam.
POP3 users that train with Webmail
Note in regards to the above training instructions: If
you had us set up your filtering based on the assumption that you would be
using POP3, then all email is delivered to your Inbox, but filtered email have
subjects prefaced with “ * VIRUS* ” or “ * SPAM * “. Since all
mail is delivered to your Inbox, consider the filter behaving incorrectly when
a spam message is not flagged as such, or a legitimate mail is flagged as “
* SPAM * ”.
You might find it convenient to set up local folders called
“Spam” and “Virus” and create filters within your particular email program to
send messages with subject lines prefixed with “ * SPAM * ” and “ * VIRUS * ”
into their respective folders. You will still want to occasionally check all
folders in case some legitimate email gets incorrectly labeled as spam.
Training Suggestions
If your email program is set to download then remove
messages from the server, there really is no easy way to transfer them from
your computer back to the server. This means that training becomes
difficult. You have a few options:
1) Set
your email program to download, but not remove, messages from the server.
Then, from webmail, you can still move incorrectly filtered messages to the
appropriate folders. After you feel that you've trained the filter
appropriately, you would want to set your email program back to removing the
messages from the server, so they don't collect and waste your server space.
2) Don't
open your regular email program for awhile, and instead use webmail until you
feel that you've trained the filter as needed. Then start using your normal
email program (e.g. Outlook) again.
3) Tolerate
occasional mistakes, and just use blacklisting and whitelisting to prevent
filtering from making mistakes over and over again on the same email address.
Blacklisting and whitelisting will still work regardless of
which option you choose above.
Spam Filter Settings
A few options are available in the “Options / Spam Filters”
section of webmail. Most importantly, you are able to blacklist and whitelist
particular email addresses, so that you always receive their mail in your
inbox, or always receive it in your Spam folder. It is recommended that you
leave other settings alone.
Additional Information
The difference between POP3 and IMAP protocols
- POP3 - This protocol downloads your mail from a remote
server and stores it on a local machine (i.e. your computer). When
downloading your mail, you have the option of keeping a copy of the
messages on the server, or removing the message from the server once it is
on your local machine. Most people use this protocol.
- IMAP - This protocol will allow you to keep the messages
on the remote server and allows you to view and manipulate the messages
without saving them on your computer. (This is most advantageous when you
access e-mail from multiple computers.)
Using the IMAP protocol offers the advantage of simply
dragging and dropping e-mail into the appropriate folder within your email
program in order to train the spam filter. Another advantage is that you
can access your email from multiple physical locations around the world.
The disadvantage is that you are
filling up space on the server by storing email there, which could push you
over quota, unless you regularly delete read email.
Using the POP protocol offers the advantage of having all
mail on your local machine, which means faster access to your mail. There is
no way to train the spam filter from within your email program if using POP3,
but it may not be necessary.
Regardless of which protocol you choose for your email
program (or if you don't use an email program), you can always use webmail
(http://webmail.beanbasket.com) to manage and manipulate all aspects of spam
filtering for your email account with Beanbasket.
Virus Filtering
Beanbasket's spam and virus filters are both server based,
acting on e-mail before it gets to your e-mail program. Whenever our servers
receive a piece of e-mail, it is checked against a database of known viruses.
If the e-mail is identified as a carrier of a virus, it is sent into the
'Virus' folder. If it is determined that the e-mail is likely to be a spam
message, then it is instead placed into your 'Spam' folder.
The virus database is provided by Sophos ( www.sophos.com). Our servers automatically
download any newly available virus definitions every hour. Please note that no
virus filter is 100% accurate. Sophos may catch some viruses that a tool like
Norton Anti-Virus would let through and Norton Anti-Virus would catch some
viruses that Sophos lets through. The reason for this is that different
anti-virus companies release virus definition files for different viruses on
different schedules.
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