Please Note: This article applies only to clients who host their organization's Email with Edge Media.

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The Edge Media mail hosting platform offers several flexible tools to help you manage and eliminate unwanted Email messages.  These fall primarily into the following categories:

Server-Side Filtering
Before your Email arrives in your inbox, it passes through our Email "gateway" server.  This server performs over 50 different tests on each message, seeking to determine whether it is legitimate.  Examples of these tests include:

• Whether the Email comes from a legitimate domain
• Whether the Email passed through a server that is a known source of spam (i.e. blacklisted)
• Whether the Email passed through a country that has a high incidence of unwanted Email
• Whether the Email contains content that is known to be offensive
• Whether the Email contains a virus

If a message fails any of these tests, then it is assigned a "score".  As the score increases, it becomes more likely that a message is spam.  For instance, a score of 10 or lower is considered "low" probability of spam, 10-19 is "medium", and over 20 is "high".  If messages are over 20, then they will be held and deleted by the mail gateway.  All other messages will be passed on to your mailbox, with the relevant scoring information included in the message header information.

Mailbox Spam Filtering
You have the ability to manage and perform actions on messages when they arrive at your mailbox.  These actions include:

• Mark the subject line of the message if it meets certain criteria
• Move the message to your "junk e-mail" folder
• Delete the message

To manage these filters, log in to your mailbox (usually http://webmail.yourdomain.com ) and choose Settings > My Spam Filtering.  The default options will allow your mailbox to inherit its spam settings from the server.  However, you can override these settings and set your own actions. 

• Actions tab :  use this to move, alter, or delete messages based on their spam probability (explained in the section above)
• Trusted Senders tab :  Enter Email addresses here for people you trust.  Any Email coming from them will skip spam filtering and will be delivered to your inbox.  Please use this option carefully, as many spammers will impersonate other people when sending their messages.

Content Filtering
In addition to spam filtering based on probability, you also have the ability to add filters (also known as "rules") to your mailbox settings.  For instance, any message that includes "get rich quick!" in the subject might be suspect to you, and therefore you might want to move it to your junk folder. 

You may add as many filters as you would like.  For more information on the various options with content filters, please use the "Help" button in the upper right corner of your mailbox.

Article ID: 40, Visibility: Public, Status: Published, Created On: 12/7/2006, Modified: 7/31/2007, Last Reviewed: 7/21/2010