Setting up email filters

You can set up filters and rules for incoming emails. To do this:

1. Log into webmail (click 'Webmail' on the login page) with your full email address and password.
2. Click 'Options' in the left panel.
3. Click 'Filters'
4. Click 'Add new filter'
5. Set up the filter parameters and required action

Caution: filtering by 'To:' with 'Exactly matches'

The 'To:' field in an email contains an email address and, optionally, a name associated with the email address. The email address may be contained within angle brackets (<>),

Given that you have no control over the name that a sender supplies with the email address, exact matches on the 'To:' field are likely to fail, and are not advised.

Instead, we recommend that you use 'Contains' rather than 'Exactly matches'. But bear in mind that, for example, if you filter on billing@mydomain.com, the filter will also apply to invoicebilling@mydomain.com.  

Using filters with forwarding

It is important to note that forwarding takes place before filtering.

For example, let's say you have set up a filter on mailbox1 that deletes emails based on certain criteria.

You also have forwarding on mailbox1 to mailbox2.

In this example, emails meeting the filter criteria will not be delivered to mailbox1 (on which the filter is set up), but all emails to mailbox1 will always get forwarded to mailbox2 regardless of whether they meet the filter criteria.

Delete, reject or move to folder?

This is a tough choice. If you 'reject' messages that match a filter then you can expect to get a lot of 'bounces' where the spammer has used an invalid 'from' address.

If you reject messages that have got to your inbox via a redirection from another mailbox (including catchall), you will get a message from the postmaster saying that the message failed to get delivered from the forwarding address to the mailbox with the filter. So for every spam message that is rejected you will receive an email from the postmaster. For this reason we recommend that you do not use the catchall mailbox.

If you 'delete' messages that match a filter the sender, if they are genuine, will have no indication that the email did not get through.

If you 'move to a folder' you will need to check the folder regularly and delete old messages in order to avoid your webmail space filling up.