MNSi - Spam Filtering Guide

1. From the opening screen of Mozilla Thunderbird, click on the Tools pull down menu, and then go to Message Filters.

2. From the Message Filters window click on New

3. For the name of the rule type Spam, put a dot next to Match Any of the Following, and select Subject and Contains from the drop down menus. In the box next to Contains type in [Possible Spam]. Then under "Perform these actions:" click on "New Folder".

4. In the "New Folder" window, type in the name "SPAM" then select Local Folders under "Create as a subfolder of:". Then click "OK".

5. The filter is now set up properly, click on the "X" in the top right corner to close the window. Mozilla Thunderbird users may also want to use Thunderbird's own built in spam filter. For instructions on doing so, please see the instructions below for further details.

6. To configure Mozilla Thunderbird's built in junk mail filter, click on the Tools pull down menu, and then go to Junk Mail Controls.

7. There are several setting for the Junk Mail Controls, such as:

"White Lists" where you can specify that anyone in your address book or collected e-mail addresses are ignored by the Junk Mail filter.
"Handling" which allows you to set specific rules for how messages are handled by the Junk Mail filter. You can decide whether messages that you determine to be junk are moved to a separate folder, or deleted and moved to the trash. Also Thunderbird gives you the option to "sanitize" HTML e-mail messages, this prevents any images or potentially virus-infected items from being run by the program unless you allow them to be.

8. Once the Thunderbird Junk Mail filter is activated, messages that Thunderbird believes may be Junk will have this at the top of the window. If the message is not Junk, click the "Not Junk" button. Thunderbird will learn as you do this to make its Filter more accurate as time goes by.

9. After you activate the junk mail filter, the "Junk" icon will appear in the menu at the top of the window. If a message is junk, and it has gotten by the filter, you can click this button to teach the filter to block this message and messages like it in the future.

10. For some HTML messages, Thunderbird can block remote images, meaning images that the e-mail tries to download from the internet. This can be used by some spammers to help identify you for spamming purposes, if you feel that the message is trustworthy, you can click on the "Show Images" button to allow the message to be viewed properly.