Mail Filtering

Filtering with the Mail Reader

• Advantages
  • filtering only takes place when the mail reader is started
  • filters work with any mail server, not only imap.ifh.de
• Disadvantages

  • Each installed mail client has to be configured separately (e.g. alpine and thunderbird, thunderbird on the desktop and on the laptop)

Server side Mail Filtering

• Advantages
  • mail gets filtered immediately, may result in faster mail reader startup
  • each mail reader does see the same filtered result
• Disadvantages
  • depends on installation on server and may use different techniques (procmail, sieve, ...)

Server side mail filtering on imap.ifh.de

• By default the user does not have an own filter and the default filter is used: If the mail contains the X-Spam-Level header and at least five stars then move the mail from the INBOX to the mail folder "junk" on imap.ifh.de. Each week the user then gets informed by email which new spam messages with a spam score less than 10 were received during the last 7 days. This email contains the email sender, the subject, the reception date and the spam score. The emails are sorted by increasing spam score. To suppress these mails see below

Own filters on imap.ifh.de

To influence the default behaviour you have to create your own filter rules using the web interface. The most common scenarios:

• The user does not want the default filter at all:
  • Create a dummy rule (e.g. IF 'From' contains 'my_friendly_spammer' THEN File Into 'junk')
• The user wants spam mail filtering but no notification by email:
  • Recreate the default rule, but with another folder name, e.g. IF 'X-Spam-Level' contains '*****' THEN File Into 'junkmail'
• The user wants spam mail filtering and additional filter rules:
  • Recreate the default rule IF 'X-Spam-Level' contains '*****' THEN File Into 'junk' Add your own rules before or after that rule by adjusting the priority of the rules.

Another interface to create and modify filter rules comes with the web mailer squirrelmail which is accessible from DESY Zeuthen computers only.

See also the mail filtering section of the imap.ifh.de wiki page