J*NK in Subject Header

[Guest guest]

Hola Herbalistas!

 

One of the better mechanisms by which we can protect ourselves from spam is

the use of server based software that looks at a piece of email, and rate it

on a wide variety of indicators to determine if it is a true message or an

unsolicited advertisement (or worse!)

 

SpamAssassin in particular has the option of adding **JUNK** to the subject

header to flag the user that SpamAssassin thinks that this email is spam.

The user, on their end is responsible for telling their email program to

look for **JUNK** in the header and immediately delete it, send it to the

trash folder, or just leave it alone.

 

This is done in the user's (you and me) email program. On the Mac's Mail

program, these are called " Rules " . Gmail calls these " filters " . Other

programs I've seen have called these things " recipes " . Basically you set up

your email program to look for **JUNK** in the subject header and tell the

email program where to put these emails.

 

If SpamAssassin is incorrectly flagging CHA list posts as spam (which it

obviously is) you may be able to modify that setting by turning down the

filter sensitivity, so it requires more spam-like indicators before

inserting that **JUNK** into the header. I myself use pair.com's email

servers, not my ISP, and I do have this ability. You may too.

 

Many of us have our programs set up to look for **JUNK** in the header in

which case, the emails are deleted automatically. However, some of our list

members have their spam filters on over-drive and are inserting the word

**JUNK** into the subject header of CHA posts. Apparently they haven't added

any filters or recipes to their own email program so these messages are

still visible in their " inbox " and they're just deleting their junk mail

manually. However, I have (and I presume many others) their email programs

set up to look for **JUNK** and delete it automatically. So, if your post

gets that **JUNK** thingy in the subject header, I'll never see it until I

take a peek into my trash folder.

 

So, my request is that should you see **JUNK** added to the email you

receive from Chinese Herbal Medicine list, try and remove it when you respond.

More workable is probably setting up the order of the filters/recipes/rules

in your own computer. These things usually work in a sort of order. You'll

need to do a little research to see if those rules at the top of the list

get priority or the bottom. Anyway, you'll want to set up another

filter/rule/recipe that looks for in the subject header and make sure

that it remains in the inbox or wherever you want it put. This way, it'll

still be visible even though someone else's SpamAssassin settings have added

the **JUNK** to the subject header.

 

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Spam is inevitable, email loss is optional.