Creating a "White List" in Eudora

You can create several filters in Eudora to help filter out SPAM email. The filters will keep all "good" email in your In mailbox and transfer the "bad" email to a different mailbox, either directly to the Trash or to a SPAM mailbox that you can look through to see if there is anything you wish to read. Basically, the first filters create a white list of addresses that are ok to receive email from - anything that meets the criteria will be kept. If the email message doesn't pass the first two filters, it will be considered SPAM.

Using the approach of creating a "white list" will help to reduce the number of filters that you create. Trying to create filters for each sender you don't wish to receive email from can be an undaunting task. Also spammers rarely use the same e-mail address more than once - it is almost impossible to catch them all.

You may wish to add other filters or keep the ones you already have, just be sure that Filter 3 is your last filter. If you currently have filters set up to "blacklist" senders, you might want to remove those filters to reduce the number of filters Eudora has to process.

This web page is offered as a guide only. More detailed instructions and current information are available from Eudora's Help menu or in the Eudora User Manual. To access the Eudora's Help feature, select Help | Topics | Find. In the "Type the word(s) you want to find" field, type Detailed Filters and click Display (Mac: Help | Filtering Messages). You can also review Filtering Eudora Messages for additional information and instructions on ordering your filters.

See Qualcomm's online tutorials, How to Use Filters (Windows) or How to Use Filters (Macintosh).

Note: the filter examples below are for Eudora POP only -- there is currently a known bug with IMAP and filtering using the filter criteria below.

Creating Filter #1

This filter is the first step in creating your "white list". Any email message that has a "From" field which contains an address in any of your address books will be put in your In mailbox.
  1. Select Tools | Filters (Mac: Window | Filters) or click the Filters window tab.
  2. Click the New button.
  3. Under "Match" select Incoming.
  4. In the "Header:" field pull down the menu and select From: .
  5. In the field below "Header", pull down the menu and select intersects address book.
  6. In the blank field immediately to the right of "intersects address book, pull down the menu and select <<All>>. This will cause the filter to look in each address book you have.
  7. Under "Action" pull down the menu and select Skip Rest. If the message meets this criteria, it will skip the rest of the filters and put the message in the In mailbox.
  8. Your screen should now look like Figure 1 below:

Filter Spam Config Figure 1

Creating Filter #2

This filter is the second step in creating your "white list". Any email message that has a "From" field which contains "uiowa.edu" will be put in your In mailbox.
  1. Click the New button.
  2. Under "Match" select Incoming.
  3. In the "Header:" field pull down the menu and select From: .
  4. In the field below "Header", pull down the menu and select contains.
  5. In the blank field immediately to the right of "contains, type uiowa.edu.
  6. Under "Action" pull down the menu and select Skip Rest. If the message meets this criteria, it will skip the rest of the filters and put the message in the In mailbox.
  7. Your screen should now look like Figure 2 below:

Filter Spam Config Figure 2

Creating Filter #3

This filter creates your "black list". Any email message that does not meet the first two filters will be transferred to a "SPAM MAIL" mailbox. You could transfer the messages to the Trash, however, using the SPAM mailbox allows you to look through the message to determine if there are any that you wish to read.
  1. Click the New button.
  2. Under "Match" select Incoming.
  3. In the "Header:" field pull down the menu and select <<Body>> .
  4. In the field below "Header", pull down the menu and select contains.
  5. In the blank field immediately to the right of "contains, leave this blank. This will find everything else that didn't meet Filters 1 and 2.
  6. Under "Action" pull down the menu and select -> Transfer To.
  7. Click the In in the box to the right and select -> New...
  8. In the New Mailbox dialog box, type in SPAM MAIL.
  9. Click OK.
  10. Your screen should now look like Figure 3 below:

Filter Spam Config Figure 3

  1. Click the x in the right hand corner of the window to close it.
  2. Click Yes when prompted with "Save changes to Filters?".

You may wish to look through the SPAM MAIL mailbox periodically to check for valid email. If you find a message that you wish to have stay in your In mailbox, you can add a nickname for that sender in your address book. After you have looked through the SPAM MAIL contents, you can delete the messages you don't wish to keep.

Copyright © 2005, The University of Iowa, all rights reserved.
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