Spam Filter Upgrade

Date Posted: December 16, 2005

We, at BTInet, understand how frustrating it can be to receive unwanted, and sometimes inappropriate, e-mail messages in your inbox. To help our customers block these unwanted messages, we have been using “blacklists” of known Spammers to prevent some of these messages from ever reaching our subscribers. In addition to these blacklists, we have also provided an online Spam Filter tool, where you can specify how aggressively you want your e-mail kept clean of Spam.

Improvements we are making.

While our online Spam filter tool has proven effective, there has been room for improvement. As of December 28, 2005, we will be implementing a new Spam Filter tool. This new tool will provide our customers greater control over how they can limit the amount of Spam that reaches them. There is nothing you need to do at your end; however, once the new filter is in place, you may wish to customize it to your personal preferences.

What you may need to do.

You do not need to do anything once your account has been transitioned to the new Spam Filter. None of your e-mail messages will be lost because your mailbox itself is not being changed in any way. The new Spam Filter will already be enabled and set to a recommended default level. After December 28, any messages that the filter considers to be Spam will have the word “Spam” or “Bulk“ added to the beginning of the Subject line. You can choose to delete these messages or log into the Spam Filter tool to adjust your filter level and/or block these messages so they never reach your mailbox.

Customizing the Filter

If you wish, you can customize the filter further to meet your individual needs instead of using the defaults we have specified for you.

1. You can choose to send messages flagged as Spam to Quarantine. Instead of receiving these messages in your Inbox, they will now be quarantined by the Spam Filter. You will then receive a daily e-mail summary of those messages that have been quarantined. From within this e-mail summary you will have the option of deleting the messages you don’t want, “whitelisting” specific senders so future e-mails from them are not blocked, or delivering the message without making any changes. NOTE: You can change the interval between e-mail summaries from daily to weekly or never.
2. With the quarantine feature enabled, you can log into the filter and choose to deliver, whitelist, or delete your messages the same way as you can in the e-mail summary; however, you can also specify if the message is in fact spam or not spam. Once you have classified 200 messages as spam and 200 messages as not spam, the filter will have enough information about your personal preferences to better deliver or block messages without your intervention.
3. If you already know specific e-mail addresses that you want to always allow or block, you can add them to your whitelist (allow) or blacklist (block.)

For those of you interested in learning more about how to use the Filter, beyond the defaults we have already setup for you, we have made the following user guide available. You will need Adobe® Acrobat® Reader™ to be able to view this file.

After December 28, the Spam Filter links in Webmail and on the User Tools section of the BTInet Subscriber Zone will be updated to point to the new filters login page. From there you can make the changes referenced within this posting.

We hope that this more robust filter will better allow you to gain control over the types of e-mail that reach you. BTInet is committed to providing the best possible online experience using state-of-the-art technology whenever possible. Thank you for choosing BTInet as your ISP of choice.