Spam Filters

Spam has become one of the biggest problems on the internet. In the continuing battle against Spammers, many Internet Service Providers (ISP) and email systems have in place filtering that attempts to stop the spam before it reaches your Inbox.

Unfortunately, legitimate email is all too often caught within these filters as spam. Below you will find information that should help you configure your email so that you may receive your BMCNO email notifications.

First Step: Most of the spamfilters use your contact list or a "Friend's List" to determine if an email is coming from someone you trust and wish to receive email from. As such, the easiest method to ensure that you receive your winner notifications and newsletters is to add to your contacts list:
"webmaster@bmcno.org"

Click on your ISP below to see the instructions:

America Online

With AOL, you can use custom spam filters to help block unwanted messages by specific word, subject and sender.

To learn about how to configure your email to accept BMCNO emails, go to AOL keyword: MAIL CONTROLS

Earthlink/Mindspring

How to Accept a Suspect Email with spamBlocker in EarthLink TotalAccess 2003

How to Unblock a Blocked Email Address in spamBlocker for EarthLink Total Access 2003

Hotmail

MSN's Hotmail has facilities for limiting incoming email to messages that come from people in your address book, plus any additional addresses that you can easily add to a list.

To add additional addresses:

• Click on Options on the top-right side of the screen.
• Click on Mail
• Click on Junk Email Protection
• Click on Safe Lists
• Add e-mail addresses and whole domains--for instance, bmcno.org.

Identify authorized senders -- (From User's Guide, Page 29)

To tell Norton AntiSpam that you want to receive email from a given address, add it to the Allowed list.

If you did not import your email address book to your Allowed list during installation, you can do so at any time after installation. You can import some or all of the addresses. You can also add names to the Allowed list individually.

To import your existing address book:

• In the main window, double-click Allowed List.
• In the Allowed List window, click Import Address Book.
• In the Import Address Book window, uncheck any addresses that you do not want to add to your Allowed list.
• Click OK.
• Click OK to close the Allowed List window.

McAfee SpamKiller

Using the Friends List - (From User's Guide, Page 23)

We recommend that you add your friends’ names and e-mail addresses to a Friends List. SpamKiller does not block messages from those on the list; therefore, adding friends helps ensure that legitimate messages get through. SpamKiller enables you to add names, e-mail addresses, domains, and mailing lists to the Friends Lists. You can add addresses one at a time, or all at once by importing an address book from your email program. SpamKiller maintains two types of lists:

• Global Friends List -- This list affects all the email accounts for the users in SpamKiller. If multiple users were added, you must be logged in to SpamKiller as an administrator in order to manage this list.
  
• Personal Friends List -- This list affects all the email accounts associated with a specific user. If multiple users were added, you must be logged in to SpamKiller as the user in order to manage this list.
  You can add friends to a Friends List to ensure their e-mail is not blocked. The Friends page displays names and addresses that you added to the Friends List. The Friends page also shows the date you added a friend and the total number of messages received from that friend.
  
• Click the Email Addresses tab to view email addresses on the Friends List.
• Click the Domains tab to view domain addresses on the list.
• Click the Mailing Lists tab to view mailing lists in the Friends List.
• To switch between the Global Friends List and your Personal Friends List, click the down arrow located on the Email Address, Domains, or Mailing Lists tab, and then select Personal Friends List.