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Managing spam filtering and whitelists

Note: This is the full documentation for spam filtering and whitelists. If you just want to quickly enable basic spam filtering, you might wish to consult the Quick spam filtering setup page.

To start working with your spam filters and whitelists, select "spam and whitelists" in the Filters list to the left. A summary of your current configuration appears to the right.

  • If spam filtering is currently disabled on your account, the summary will be greyed out. You can click [enable] to enable spam filtering.
  • When spam filtering is enabled, [enable] changes to [disable]. Click this if you wish to turn spam filtering off.

The default configuration of 5 stars and Spam-30 is chosen as being the most useful to most people. However, if you have other needs or wish to set up whitelists, you can click [edit] to change these settings.

Editing the spam and whitelists filter


Editing the spam and whitelists filter (click for larger image in a new window)

While you are editing your spam and whitelists filter, other areas of the filter management tool will be disabled and greyed out. These will be re-activated when you Save or Cancel your edits.

The Save button only saves your changes to your browser. You will still need to click Apply to make the changes permanent and active on your account.

The configurable settings for the spam and whitelists filter are:

When a message gets at least:

Use this to set the threshold at which you want spam filtering to kick in. The spam detection software is configured to mark messages it considers spam with 5 or more stars, and messages it considers non-spam with less than 5 stars. Thus the suggested, and default, threshold is set to "5 stars".

  • If you want stricter filtering (more messages being filtered to your nominated spam folder), set this to a smaller value.
  • If you want more lenient filtering (more messages being delivered to your Inbox) then set this to a higher value.

Move the message to the folder:

Messages that match your threshold will be moved to this folder, rather than being delivered to your Inbox.

  • If the folder does not exist it will be automatically created the first time a message is delivered to it. However, your email client may or may not notice the existence of the new folder without manual intervention.
  • Messages in the folder named Spam-7 are automatically deleted after they have been there 7 days. Spam-30 and Spam-60 work similarly, for 30 and 60 days respectively.
  • This behaviour does not extend to other arbitrary numbers, or to sub-folders.

Unless it is from one of these addresses:

You can use this to "whitelist" specific email addresses. Email that claims to be from an address you list here will never be filtered to your nominated spam folder, regardless of its spam score.

  • Addresses should be listed one per line.
  • Email addresses are fairly trivial to fake. Viruses in particular are notorious for claiming to be from someone you know. Because of this, whitelists should be used sparingly, if at all.

Or one of these domains:

You can use this to "whitelist" specific email domains. Email that claims to be from any address at a domain you list here will never be filtered to your nominated spam folder, regardless of its spam score.

  • Domains should be listed one per line.
  • The domain of an email address is everything after the @ symbol.
  • Email addresses are fairly trivial to fake. Viruses in particular are notorious for claiming to be from someone you know. Because of this, whitelists should be used sparingly, if at all.