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From the support desk: Auto deleting spam

4 October 2018

Daniel Krause

We like to let our clients choose exactly how they want their mail filtered and processed, so we’re quite hands off with email settings. One of the regular questions we’re asked revolves around what to do with spam that might build up after being filtered into a spam folder. The solution is easy; mail filters can be used to automatically delete processed spam on a regular basis. Here’s how!

When we receive emails on our email platform, they all pass through a filter and are reviewed based on their content. They are judged based on how much they look like spam. There are specific keywords and structures that cause an email to be marked as spam, but it is, of course, a little bit more complicated than that.

The default action nowadays is to automatically move the spam emails to the Spam folder, however, it IS also possible to have the server delete the emails right away. Note, this is not recommended in most cases as there are some scenarios where emails that do get marked as spam are actually legitimate emails.

It’s possible to change the filter and tailor it to your needs until you find a nice middle-ground where legitimate emails make their way through the filter, whilst spam emails get marked as spam as they should. You can see more on how to alter your spam filter in our knowledge base article below:

https://www.34sp.com/kb/59/updating-email-spam-filters

Once the spam filter has been adjusted to a comfortable value where you feel you’ve reached the point of spam emails going to the Spam folder, then you can choose to automatically delete any spam you receive.

To automatically delete the emails, log in to your webmail account below:

https://mail.34sp.com/

Within the Settings area at the top, go to Filters (on the left). In the third column labelled “Filters”, click the + icon at the bottom to add a new filter.

You can name the filter whatever you would like to, but for the sake of keeping it relevant, let’s call it “Delete spam”.

What is most important is that you set the conditions correctly.

Once the conditions are set, under the “…execute the following actions:” heading, you can select “Delete message” from the drop-down menu.

Don’t forget to click Save at the bottom!

Once you’ve done that it will appear on the list of filters in the third column of the settings, and will automatically delete any emails that come through that are marked as spam.