E-mail Filtering
You can block an e-mail using spam filters. There are many definitions of spam,
but one particularly useful one is the following:
Spam is the electronic version of junk mail, and has been around since the
Internet was created. E-mail filters are a way of filtering your e-mail to remove
unwanted mail based on a variety of criteria. You can block any sort of e-mail,
not just mail of a commercial nature. Blocked mail can be deleted automatically
or sent to another e-mail address or script. These filters are quite flexible
- some examples are provided after the instruction on how to add a spam filter
below. All filters are cumulative.
Useful spam links:
Six
simple things you can do to prevent spam
Alternate
definition of spam
Usenet
definition of spam
Also refer to Spam Assassin for another
approach to dealing with spam.
To add an e-mail filter:
- Click on the E-mail Filtering link in the Mail area.
- Click on the Add Filter link.
- Click on the required header field in the first drop-down list. These are
the various fields in any e-mail message.
- Click on the required filter action in the second drop-down list. This action
will act on the text entered in the third field.
- equals - match the text exactly (whole words only). "Credit"
will block "Credit".
- matches regex - matches the text based on regular expression (regex)
rules. Regular expressions are a powerful but complex area. You do not need to
use regular expression filters for most circumstances. Refer to these two good
introductory tutorials - Using
Regular Expressions and Learning
to Use Regular Expressions - for more information.
- contains - match the specified text in any circumstance. "porn"
will block "porn" and "pornography".
- begins with - match the specified text when it is the beginning of
a word. "porn" will block "porn" and "pornography"
but not "teenporn".
- Enter the filter text in the third field. This text is case sensitive.
- Enter the destination for the filtered e-mail in the Destination field. There
are three separate types of destination:
- Destroy the e-mail - Enter Discard in the field.
- Redirect to another address - Enter the e-mail address to which to redirect
the e-mail.
- Redirect to a script - Enter the full script path on the machine that hosts
your web site.
- Click on the Activate button.
Example:
- To redirect all e-mail from "john@paradise.net", enter:
From, equals, john@paradise.net, david@corse.org.nz
- To delete all e-mail from paradise.net, enter: From, contains, paradise.net,
Discard
- To delete all references to pornography, enter: Any Header, contains, porn,
Discard
- To discard all e-mail that Spam Assassin has marked as spam, enter: SpamAssassin
Spam Header, begins with, yes, Discard
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