Many people receive annoying EMail which they do not wish to receive. Frequently, the unwanted mail is advertising which you did not request. Many people find this unwanted EMail to be frustrating and it is often difficult to induce the sender to stop sending it to you.

Some people never receive unwanted EMail; those people do not need a filter. Others have had the misfortune of having their name placed on a mailing list which has been sold to many different spammers and receive a lot of junk mail.

Spam is unwanted mail which is sent to many tens of thousands of people, whether or not the recipient is interested in the content of that EMail. Usually, this mail is in the form of unsolicited advertising for products.

In the discussion of the RadixNet EMail Filter, we are using the term "spam" to include any unwanted Email, whether or not it is technically Spam.

Just as with junk paper mail, some people enjoy receiving spam. However, we have found that most of our users do not welcome unsolicited mail.

No, the EMail filter is entirely voluntary.

The RadixNet EMail Filter automatically discards any mail which not explicitly addressed to you. You do not need to know ahead of time the addresses to block.

The discarded mail is NOT thrown away until one week has gone by. It is saved in a separate spam directory so that you can retrieve it if you wish.

No, the discarded mail is not saved in your regular mailbox, or in your user directory and does not count. RadixNet will automatically delete all discarded mail when it is one week old.

You must enter both your Login and Password in order to change the filter.

The EMail actually is addressed to you, in the Blind Carbon Copy, or BCC, line of the mail header. You cannot see the BCC line, so it appears that the mail is not addressed to you. Many mailing lists work in this manner.

The TO List is the list of addresses for which you are willing to accept mail. For most people, this will include your own EMail address and the "To" address of any Email lists you subscribe to.

This is a list of addresses from which you will always accept mail, no matter what the To address might be. For example, you may wish to accept all EMail from your employer, no matter how it is address. These are addresses which will appear in the From line of the mail.

This is a list of addresses of people or organizations whose EMail you never wish to receive. These are addresses which will appear in the From line of the mail.

In the To List, the Black List and the White List you may specify either a domain name or a specific email address. Examples:

Just place one address per line.

The Spam Log will be sent to you twice per day, when there has been some mail discarded.

To specifically request a log of mail discarded since your last log was received, send an email:

To request a log of ALL discarded mail which is still available for you to read:

You can ask for any discarded mail to be (re)sent to your normal mailbox.

Send an email to yourself:

The Message-Id line must include the word "Message-Id" and the angle brackets. You may list as many message IDs as you wish in the body of one message.

The easiest way to do this is to simply reply to your Spam Log EMail, adding the word "resend" to the Subject line and deleting the Message IDs you do not want. It is not necessary to edit the text of the Spam Log before sending it.

Add the keyword "usefrom" to the subject line and use the >From lines in the spam log.

Example:

To: mylogin@radix.net
Subject: resend usefrom

>From niceguy@gooddomain.com Wed Apr 14 09:28:54 1999

15. I set up the filter, but I still get junk mail!

It is not possible to keep all unwanted mail out of your mailbox. The RadixNet EMail filter will do a reasonable job, but will not get rid of mail which is explicitly addressed to you. If you receive junk mail from a specific place, you can put that spammer's mail address on your Black List for next time.

When you update the Web form a procmail script is automatically generated. Procmail is the standard method of creating mail filters for individual mailboxes. Your personalized procmail script is automatically stored in your personal mail directory on the POP mail server and will be used on the very next piece of mail you receive.

If you have a shell account and your mail is on saltmine, the procmail script is NOT automatically installed. Instead, it is emailed to you so that you can install it yourself. The main reason for this method is that many of our shell users already have their own procmail script which may be used in combination with the EMail Filter.