UCSD Blink: Filtering Spam in Apple Mail

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Blink Home > Technology > Filtering Spam in Apple Mail — Basic

Filtering Spam in Apple Mail — Basic

Summary: Set up mail filters to decrease junk mail (also known as spam) in your e-mail inbox. This basic form of filtering uses the spam status header to filter junk mail into a separate folder.

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What to do		How to do it
1	Create a Spam mailbox.	Open Apple Mail. From the Mailbox menu, choose New Mailbox. Enter Spam in the Name field. Click OK.
2	Open the Preferences window.	From the Mail menu, choose Preferences.
3	Begin creating a rule.	Select the Rules icon. Click Add Rule.
4	Open the Header List.	Click From and choose Edit Header List.
5	Add the X-Spam-Flag header.	In the Header box, type X-Spam-Flag Click Add Header. Click OK.
6	Complete rule setup.	For Description, type Spam, and change the rule to: If any of the following conditions are met: X-Spam-Flag Contains YES Perform the following actions: Transfer Message to mailbox: Spam Click OK. You may now close the Rules window.
7	Pay attention to filtered spam.	Incoming e-mail that appears to be spam will automatically be moved to the new folder you created. It's possible for legitimate e-mail to be marked as spam. Periodically check the contents of the Spam folder to ensure that this has not occurred before deleting its contents.
8	Turn off Junk Mail filtering in Mac OS X 2.x and later (optional).	Apple has a feature that heuristically filters spam. That means that you train it with what you think is spam, and eventually it will "know you well enough" to filter the spam into a separate mailbox. Some users find this method provides too many "false positives" where legitimate mail is labeled as junk. To turn this feature off: Select the Mail menu. Point to Junk Mail and choose Off.