Spam Filtering From Your
ISP
January 2005
What’s Spam and
Why Should I Filter It?
Friends Circle
Gives You Control
Add newsletters
and online shopping favorites
Spam Defense with
Friends Circle
Friends Circle
with Confirmation
Subscribers Must
Manage Mail with Confirmation
“Confirmation”
Challenges E-mail Senders
The Challenge is
easy (if you’re human)
What’s Spam and Why Should I Filter It?
If you’ve ever had an e-mail account, you know about unsolicited commercial e-mail, or Spam. Ads for Viagra, adult content, the latest diet craze and other marketing offers fill up your e-mail inbox and make it difficult to find messages from family and friends.
Your Internet service provider understands that you have e-mail in order to keep close with those in your circle—and not to receive a flood of Spam!
That’s why we’ve given you power over your e-mail inbox with three Spam filtering options.
Friends Circle Gives You Control
To give you the power to reject Spam, your ISP has given you
control of your e-mail inbox with the
With this powerful
solution, you can specify to receive or reject e-mail from an individual
address or an entire domain (see table below).
|
E-mail Type |
|
|
Individual
address |
|
|
Entire
domain |
@aol.com; @earthlink.net |
Add newsletters and online shopping favorites
If you subscribe to
electronic newsletters or shop online, include those domain addresses in your
Setting the Spam Filter
Login to the AdminTool using your user name and password.
Select Spam Filtering from the menu on the left (Figure 1).
Figure 1
Three Filtering Options
At the Spam Filtering screen, select the level of Spam filtering that you would like from the dropdown menu (Figure 2). Descriptions of each level follow the dropdown menu.
After selecting the Spam filtering type, click the Next arrow to access the next screen. The screen that appears next will depend on the type of Spam filtering selected.
The remainder of this section of the manual will describe and illustrate each Spam filtering level.
Figure 2
Spam Defense with Friends Circle
This is the default option.
Never miss e-mail from the people who matter most: your friends and
family. Most users will want the power and flexibility of this level of Spam
protection. With Spam Defense and
Select
To set, select Spam Defense with
Click the Next arrow to access the Spam Filtering – Spam Defense with Friends Circle screen (Figure 3).
Figure 3
Set the level of Spam Detection and Blocking from their respective dropdown menus (see table below).
|
Spam Detection Levels |
Spam Blocking Levels |
|
High—99.94% Spam detected |
Block ALL mail flagged as Spam |
|
Medium—90% Spam detected |
Block most Spam |
|
Low—80% Spam detected |
NONE—Do not block Spam |
|
NONE—No Spam detected |
|
Define
Next, define how Spam is managed via flagging and folder options.
Then, define your
Accept
Click the Next arrow to access the Change Settings – Verify screen (Figure 4).
Figure 4
To accept the changes to the account, select the Make Changes button.
Friends Circle Only
With this setting, users receive e-mail only from the
addresses or domains included in the
Select
To set, select Friends Circle Only from the dropdown menu on the Spam Filtering screen (Figure 2).
Click the Next arrow to access the Spam Filtering – Friends Circle Only screen (Figure 5).
Figure 5
Define
Define your
If the user subscribes to electronic newsletters or receives
computer-generated e-mail from online shopping sites, the user should include
those domains (such as “@amazon.com” or “@ebay.com”) in the
Accept
Click the Next arrow to access the Change Settings – Verify screen (Figure 6).
Figure 6
To accept the changes to the account, select the Make Changes button.
Friends Circle with Confirmation
Almost all Spam is sent by automated computer systems. To
prevent automated systems from sending you mail, any address not in your
Select
To set, select Friends Circle Only from the dropdown menu on the Spam Filtering screen (Figure 2).
Click the Next arrow to access the Spam Filtering –
Figure 7
Define
Enter e-mail addresses to be included in the
If the user subscribes to electronic newsletters or receives
computer-generated e-mail from online shopping sites, the user should include
those domains (such as “@amazon.com” or “@ebay.com”) in the
Accept
Click the Next arrow to access the Change Settings – Verify screen (Figure 6).
Figure 8
To accept the changes to the account, select the Make Changes button.
Subscribers Must Manage Mail with Confirmation
If you select
To get all of your mail, we recommend that you “two-step your way to less Spam” by:
§
Creating a
o Friends and family with whom the user corresponds
o Electronic newsletters
o Domains for sites like e-Bay or favorite shopping sites
§ Checking the AdminTool for “Pending” addresses
o “Pending” addresses are those that have not responded to the challenge. If the challenge has not been taken within one week, the address will be blocked.
§
Subscribers will be able to add pending
addresses to the
“Confirmation” Challenges E-mail Senders
When users set Friends Circle with Confirmation as the Spam filtering level, any sender of e-mail will be asked to take a “challenge.” Unless the sender takes and passes the challenge, the user will not receive e-mail from that sender.
The Challenge is easy (if you’re human)
When e-mail is sent to an account that has
Hello,
In
order for me to receive the e-mail that you recently sent, please click on the
link below and follow the simple instructions provided. By doing so, you will be added to my list of
approved senders and will be able to send messages without any further
intervention.
Please
take this action within a week of receiving this email. If no action is taken, I will not receive
your message. Your help allows me to
filter out my unwanted email!
[Link
removed]
Thank
you,
[User
name]
Upon clicking the link included in the e-mail, the sender sees the following screen and must select the correct animal that is represented in the pictures (Figure 9).
Figure 9
The images (in this illustration, of bears) appear distorted in order to make it difficult for an automated computer program to guess the animal represented.
If the correct image is chosen, the sender receives the following message (Figure 10):
Figure 10
In addition, the sender receives e-mail containing the following message:
Hello,
Your
confirmation was accepted, and so your pending message/s have been delivered.
Thanks
for your cooperation.