This article contains a comprehensive list of questions and answers concerning SPAM and how your PSMail account can help you deal with it.
- Why am I getting SPAM in my psmail.net account?
- How can I avoid or manage SPAM that comes to my psmail.net mailbox?
- Some of my good messages end up getting detected as SPAM. What can I do to prevent this?
- What is the “Deleted emails digest” and the “Quarantine email digest?” Why do I not see any emails in my “Deleted emails box” that were SPAM?
- Where can I find an email’s header?
- How can I report SPAM from webmail or from a web-based email client?
- Why am I seeing SPAM that seems to come from a trusted local user or a PSMail user?
Why am I getting SPAM in my psmail.net account?
Your email address can become a SPAM target in any number of ways. Perhaps your address is posted publically (like for a business advertisement), you’ve registered for an online forum, or you’ve used your address to sign up for a company’s newsletter. These activities, and many more like them, can make your email address available to SPAMers. To limit the possiblitily that your address will become compromised, be sure to read Privacy Policies and opt out of “Remember my address” options on websites that require registration. Also, inform others that you do not wish to have your email address typed in the body of an email.
How can I avoid or manage SPAM that comes to my psmail.net mailbox?
To avoid SPAM messages, take the following steps:
- Avoid giving your email address in public websites.
- Do not use your email address to sign up for free services that fail to post any privacy disclaimers.
- Register for one of the free email accounts like Yahoo or Gmail to use for Internet registration and web use.
At PSMail we further eliminate SPAM messages through our SPAM Control. To adjust your SPAM Control settings:
- Log in to your PSMail account.
- Go to Manage Account and then Spam Control.
- Enabling a score of about “15” should block most normal SPAM. A stronger score of “12” will detect 95% of spam and is useful if you are receiving large amounts of unwanted mail.
Also, be sure to make use of your White and Black Lists:
- Add legitimate email addresses to the White List to ensure that email from those senders is not blocked. (NOTE: Our server automatically adds addresses to which you have sent mail to the white list.)
- Add email addresses of chronic offenders to your Black List to permanently block them, regardless of the content of the email they send.
- Blocked emails can either be “QUARANTINED” or “DELETED”.
- Quarantined messages are sent to you weekly in EML format (zip) that can be opened on your computer and read as a normal message.
- A report of Deleted messages is sent to you weekly. You can still retrieve these messages within 30 days, and the weekly report gives you the option to White List trusted users.
Some of my good messages end up getting detected as SPAM. What can I do to prevent this?
Please send the email that was blocked by our scanner to abuse@psmail.net with the full Internet email headers, and indicate to us that it is a “good email.” We can fine tune the scanner to avoid identifying these types of messages as SPAM.
What is the “Deleted emails digest” and the “Quarantine email digest?” Why do I not see any emails in my “Deleted emails box” that were SPAM?
This depends on your account setup. See the question above, “How can I avoid or manage SPAM that comes to my psmail.net mailbox?”
Where can I find an email’s header?
- For Outlook Express, open the message and go to File, then Properties, then Details (tab), and finally Message Source.
- For Outlook, open the message and go to View. Then click on Options and see the window that says Internet headers.
- For iMail, open the message and to go View, then Message, and then Long Headers.
- For webmail, when you are reading the message you will see two icons on top right side of the message status in green, the icon on the right looks like text-headers. See below for example.
We can use this header information to track an email, see details of the message, determine the original sender, and block the email if it is SPAM.
How can I report SPAM from webmail or from a web-based email client?
- Log in to your PSMail account from your browser.
- Go to Read Mail and open the email that you’ve identified as SPAM. (NOTE: Do NOT open any attachments from the offending email.)
- Click the icon Report message as SPAM.
- Follow the steps to complete the abuse report.
Why am I seeing SPAM that seems to come from a trusted local user or a PSMail user?
The “from” address in emails can be spoofed or faked. While we whitelist authenticated internal users so they will not be put in the SPAM quarantine folder, if these addresses seem to be faked our system will catch them.