The Filter level in Manager lets you reject unwanted email and sort your email in a number of different ways. You can configure protection against unwanted email, set up an auto-reply, and sort email to folders and other email addresses. Make sure you click [Save settings] if you make any changes to the settings.
Contents
Unwanted Email Protection
These settings are found at the top of the Filter page, and protect your account from potentially harmful email and spam.
Scan for viruses
This option will reject email containing harmful content such as computer viruses. Note that you will not be notified of such messages as they will be rejected by the system before they reach your account.
We recommend that especially users running Windows install virus scanning software on their computers as an extra layer of protection.
See also What are computer viruses, and how to avoid them.
Block sender
If you are getting emails in your Inbox that you don’t want, you can use Block Sender to block specific addresses and domains that you don’t want to receive emails from. Future emails from those addresses will be deleted and will not be seen in your account. Go to Manager – Filter – Block Sender and type in the email or domain address.
You can also add new entries directly via the Block sender/domain links in the upper right hand corner of received email.
Note: This function is not an effective tool for blocking spam since most spammers do not use their real addresses in the From field. Consider using the spam filtering options in addition.
Note: To Block entire domains use the format @domain.com.
Detect junk mail
The Runbox spam filter catches unsolicited junk email before it reaches your Inbox. It works on all incoming email, and regardless of how you access your email.
We centrally reject some very obvious spam, but there are also other options that are specific to your account; these are detailed below.
One of the spam filter options lets you choose which folder spam is moved to.
Yes, save to Spam
This option is activated by default, and saves incoming messages that are classified as spam to your Spam folder or another folder of your choice. Use the dropdown menu to select folder.
Basic spam filtering is powered by SpamAssassin, a rule- and signature-based spam filter that will catch 80-90% of incoming spam. Please note that you should periodically check your spam folder for any misclassified, legitimate messages since no spam filter is 100% reliable.
Users who opt to receive commercial email or mailing list email (including Yahoo Groups subscribers) might want to deactivate the spam filter because it might classify such messages as spam.
Allowlist
The allowlist lets you add addresses and domains from which you always want to receive mail, no matter how high the spam score is. This is useful for regular contacts, as well as for newsletters and other email susceptible to being considered spam. Addresses in Contacts are automatically allowlisted.
The allowlist only applies to the spam filter, and does not have any effect on what is entered in the Block sender list.
Note: To allowlist entire domains use the format @domain.com. For example, adding @runbox.com to the allowlist will allowlist all runbox.com addresses.
False Positives
One of the most effective ways to prevent legitimate emails from ending up in the junk folder is to add the sender’s email address to your contacts or allowlist. This action tells your email client that you recognize and trust this sender, significantly reducing the likelihood of their messages being misclassified as spam.
In addition to adding contacts, setting up email filters is another tool at your disposal. Filters allow you to automatically direct important emails to specific folders.
Email Programs – Because email programs use their own algorithms, they can often override the decisions made by the Runbox spam filter. This means that even if an email has been marked as safe and allowlisted on the Runbox server side, it might still end up in Junk/Spam instead of your inbox. In essence, by the time the email reaches your inbox, your email program has potentially overruled the decisions already made by filters you have set up in Runbox. We recommend turning off the spam filter in your email program and see if the Runbox spam filter works well enough for the types of email you receive.
Autoreply
You can set an Autoreply message entering a subject and a message. If the left empty, the subject of the message will be “Re: [original subject]”.
Note that autoreplies:
- …will only be sent to messages addressed to you personally.
- …will only be sent once per week to the same address. To reset this recipient list, set Autoreply to Inactive, Save Settings, and re-activate.
Manual filters
Manual filters lets you sort incoming email and is a convenient way to automatically organize your email.
Select what criteria you want incoming email to match, and what action should be taken. You can set up as many filters as you’d like; a new one will appear for each previous one you save.
Your email will “fall” through the filters you have set up, one beneath the other. For each filter some email may be retained, while the rest fall through to the next one, and so on.
You can set up several hundred filters, and a new, empty entry will appear at the bottom of the list every time you save a new filter.
Matching
When setting up a filter, first choose which header field you want to filter by, e.g. the message’s To, From, Subject, or Body field, from the first drop-down menu.
In the next drop-down menu (to the right) you choose whether the given field in your emails should or should not contain the text string which you enter in last the field on the right. Note that this field is not case sensitive.
Action
On the next line, you choose how the email that match your criteria will be handled. Note how the different menu options work, as they affect all subsequent email processing:
- Saved to folder saves the email in the folder you specify, skipping any other filters and going directly to the Access level.
- Forwarded to sends a copy of the email to another email address while retaining the original email and allowing it to pass down to other filters and to the Access level.
- Redirected to sends the original email to another email address and does not allow it to pass down to the next filter or the Access level.
- Sent as alert to sends a short message with only the sender and subject of the email – convenient for instance if you can receive email messages on your mobile phone.
- Deleted permanently deletes the email, not allowing it to be accessed at all.
In the last field you enter the email address(es) or folder you want the email meeting your defined criteria sent to. Separate multiple addresses by using a comma or semicolon and a space. You can only specify one folder for each filter. All email that remains after the filtering process will continue down to the Access level and thus be accessible in your Webmail Inbox as well as through other, local email clients.
Active/inactive
Make sure the “Active” option above your filter is selected if you want the filter to be processed.
The “inactive” option is convenient if you want the filter stored but not active.
Order
When creating a new filter, it will appear after any other existing filters you have previously set up and will thus be processed last, unless you enter a number in the “Order” field. You can re-order all your filters by entering a number in their “Order” fields and clicking [Save settings].
- More information: Order Values for Filter Processing
Deleting a filter
If you want to delete a filter, check the “Delete” box to the right in the filter before clicking [Save settings].
Note: Make sure that you do not set up filters that forward to your own account, even via domains or aliases you have set up with Runbox. Doing so will create an email loop and effectively stop email delivery to your account altogether.
Examples
To delete all email where the “subject” field contains the word “free”, you would enter:
To forward all the remaining email where the “from” field doesn’t contain “work.com” to a family member at “esmith@home.com”:
To save all the remaining email where the “to” field contains “jsmith@company.com” to the folder “Business”:
All remaining email will continue down to the Access level, and will be accessible in your Webmail Inbox as well as other email clients.