INTRO
OK. Here's a small document to help you. This document will grow with time.
IMPORTANT! For the email to function, you must enable your browser to accept cookies from emailxl.com.
emailXL uses a customized version of Squirrelmail.
Squirrelmail has its own help files which are found on the main Squirrelmail
page. NOTE: Macintosh users running Internet Explorer might have
difficulty accessing this. We're working to fix this.
spam CONTROL
Each mail account is created with the BayesSpam filter turned ON with a
reasonable set of defaults. Look under "options" to find out about BayesSpam.
It won't actually DO anything until you click on "Rebuild Filtering Database" and it is
NOT advisable to rebuild the database until you have at least 12 non-spam
emails and 12 spam emails in the database. To put a message in the database
you can click on either "spam" or "non-spam" in the mail header of each
message under "BayesSpam Links". By default, the filter is set to filter only
your INBOX, you can change this, of course, but you are unlikely to have other
folders of incoming spam.
BayesSpam needs to learn what you consider spam. For this reason you should
have at least a dozen of each type of email in the spam corpus database before
you click on "Rebuild Filtering Database Now". If you have no messages in the
database (if you've never clicked "spam" or "non-spam" on a message), you won't
even get the option to rebuild the database. After you have at least
2 dozen emails in the database you probably want to set "Rebuild on
Login". Every time you rebuild, the filter gets a little bit better at telling
the difference between spam and email.
When the filter is getting pretty good, you probably want to dump all the
high-probabilty-of-spam stuff into a folder named "garbage" or "junk" or
some more appropriate name. First create a folder with the name you want and
then enter this into the "Folder to Filter Into" box. This will keep the spam
out of your INBOX. Spam is set (by default) to stay in your INBOX.
There is also a folder for BayesSpam to put messages it is uncertain about
into. Messages that the filter calculates have around a 50% probability of
being spam go here. You can leave this as INBOX or you might want to create a
third folder named "questionable" or "maybe-not".
Until the filter has
a big enough "spam" and "non-spam" selection to learn the difference between
email and garbage, it will tend to calculate spam probabilities of about 50%.
This is the reason it is suggested not to "Rebuild Filtering Database Now"
until you have at least a dozen of each email in the database --it would not
be reliable!
There is a second (more drastic) way to filter spam. You may click under
the option named "spam filtering" to select from various "blacklists". By
default this feature is disabled.
Other spam fighting tools and tips are
likely to appear in the future. Watch this page and the "options" list.
Finally
If you experience any mail difficulties that the help files can't get you
through, call 312-993-0363 during regular business hours and we'll help you out.
