Filtering Tips

Filter based on whether the sender is already in one of your address books.

Most people you communicate with are probably already in one of your address books already so any mail sent to you where the sender is not in one of your address books gets filtered to a special mailbox. If your regular spam filters are doing a good job new messages into this mailbox will be infrequent – which means you can pay attention to them without feeling like it is a waste of time. A key client feature that makes this work is to have the people you have sent mail to automatically included in an address book category.

Filter Patterns: Eudora

One of the selectable categories in your address book is "History List" anybody's address you've sent mail to or replied to is in there so you don't have to add those people.

Filter mail that pretends to be from you but isn't

One class of spam consists of mail that is constructed to appear as if it was sent by you. You can often filter these messages by matching messages that appear to be from your email address but don't have your name in quotes as part of the address.

Filter Patterns: Eudora

Filter mail from email lists more effectively

Many email lists include a List-ID: header in mail sent from the list. Here's an example from the loops-discuss list.

List-Id: <loops-discuss.googlegroups.com>

The string loops-discuss.googlegroups.com is a unique identifier that makes filtering more effective than just matching the list address:

loops-discuss@googlegroups.com

If you are filtering on the list email address itself when someone replies to the list AND directly to you both messages will go the Mailbox list messages are filtered to.

This technique is even more helpful when people cross-post to two lists you are subscribed to. In this case each of the duplicate messages have both email addresses. If you have two filters, each one matching a list both messages will be matched by the first filter encountered.

eudora_filter_for_messages_from_me_that_are_not.png (image/png)
eudora_filter_for_people_not_in_addressbooks.png (image/png)
eudora_filter_for_people_not_in_addressbooks.png (image/png)
eudora_filter_for_messages_from_me_that_are_not.png (image/png)
eudora_filter_for_messages_from_me_that_are_not.png (image/png)
eudora_filter_for_people_not_in_addressbooks.png (image/png)