Filed under: Software, Productivity, Internet Tools, .Mac
.Mac webmail now does server-side spam filtering
by David Chartier (RSS feed) on Aug 7th 2007 at 4:45PM
As with most big Apple announcements, at least a few features slip through the cracks. Thanks to TUAW reader Brandon Werner, we caught one that answers a long-time complaint of .Mac users and critics: server-side spam filtering. Until today (or at least recently; we've never noticed this before), checking your mail at the .Mac site would subject you to any and all spam you receive, since the webmail didn't filter anything out; Apple leaves that up to Mail (or your other client of choice). Now, finally, .Mac webmail offers this option to filter out junk mail right on the server, giving you at least some sort of a break from the stream of junk you might inevitably encounter. Be sure to check out the support document linked at this option, as it outlines a few steps to take to ensure that your email client and .Mac webmail keep in step regarding the messages that actually get filed into the junk mail folder. This will allow you to review those messages either from the webmail client or your desktop client, making it easy to pick out the few genuine messages that get swept away with the actual garbage.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Andy said 5:16PM on 8-07-2007
WELCOME TO 2001!!!!!!
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zac said 6:09PM on 8-07-2007
well i guess this means we can finally use .mac mail on the iphone!
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Arnoz said 6:54PM on 8-07-2007
Mmh, I can't find this option in Preferences.
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kirk said 7:19PM on 8-07-2007
Yay! I went for years w/o getting any spam on my dotmac account until about a month ago. Mail.app catches them, but there's no spam filters on the iPhone.
Speaking of iPhone, I would have thought Apple would have added push email to .mac imap accounts for iPhones or other phones that are push enabled.
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Andre said 10:06PM on 8-07-2007
Not in my preferences yet...
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artifex said 8:30PM on 8-07-2007
Does anyone still use .mac for email? Gmail even handles my domain mail for free.
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Michael said 11:53PM on 8-07-2007
I was wondering about the .Mac Mail, with the new ability to use your own domain for web publishing, does anyone know if you can use your own domain for .Mac email also?
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Marco F. said 4:54AM on 8-08-2007
This is good news.
Now, next update: server side filters. I'd like my dotmacwebmail filter my mails like Mail.app. If it can be done for junk, it can be done for normal rules as well :-)
regarding .mac vs gmail.. I've been there, and got back to .mac after 6 months gmail. I prefer the imap approach to the "web only" or pop3 gmail gives.
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Marco F. said 4:56AM on 8-08-2007
@Michael:
the domain setting in dotmac is only valid for the web part. even the gallery won't work with the domain (see the apple documents about it)
I just defined a forwarding email acct on my domain host which forward the email to my dotmac mail. I then defined a dummy email acct in Mail.app so I could also reply with the given email address.. works pretty well, although it remains a work-around.
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David Chartier said 10:38AM on 8-08-2007
#9: That's a great trick that I've been using for my Gmail account for a while so I can use it over IMAP with Mail. Now that I have 5GB of space with .Mac and an iPhone now though, I'm thinking about transitioning all my email to .Mac and just be done with the hackery.
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David L said 6:28PM on 10-02-2007
Is it possible to make the new .Mac server-side spam filtering work for messages delivered to the iPhone? It appears to me that the filtering only works if you're actually using the Webmail interface or the Apple Mail Junk folders. If you're away from your Mac and away from .Mac, then spam goes straight through to my iPhone. If Apple Mail is running and moves a spam message to the Junk folder, then through the miracle of IMAP it is sync'd with my iPhone. The problem is when I'm away and not running Mail.app or dotMac webmail.
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