Spam is increasing exponentially and we take very seriously the task of helping clients battle spam. Please note that The Wire never sells or shares its email addresses with any third party bulk mail businesses and we maintain a zero tolerance policy with our own clients who use our accounts to send spam. We will terminate the service of any client who sends unsolicited email from a Wire account, or uses a third party bulk mailer to point people to their website.

1. Locking down your domain email definition

If you have domain email and receive spam at an email address that is not used for office communication, please contact us with the set of domain email addresses you need. Locking down your domain to legitimate email addresses will substantially cut down on the spam and virus generated email you receive. In the past, having the "anything at" email forward to an account took care of spelling mistakes. Now this wide open email definition is a spam magnet.

2. SpamAssassin email filter

SpamAssassin software applies a series of algorithms to determine if email is likely spam and then adds the tag {Spam?}to the Subject line. You can then set up an email filter (see below) to look for the tagged email and move this email from your Inbox to a spam folder. Please check this spam folder periodically, especially for email lists, to ensure legitimate email is not marked as spam. If an email is incorrectly marked as spam send the FROM address to support@thewire.ca.

3. Manual identification of spam

Wire staff manually identify spam that gets past out filters and alerts SpamAssassin's Bayesian filters which then "learn" from the set of identified spam.

Despite these measures, some spam will still avoid our filters. We work to ensure that there are no false positive identifications (email identified as spam that is not spam).

4. Change of email address

Some of our clients have used the same email addresses for many years. Often in the earlier days of the internet, we would post our email address to news groups and guest books without realising that an entire industry would develop to 'harvest' these emails. If you wish to change your email address please call or contact us to arrange a new email address. Please read the privacy statement of any website that you email and avoid using your real email address on news groups. A simple way to avoid spammers is to post to news group with an altered email address such as barryNOSPAM@domain.com or judyATdomainDOTcom.

We hope this information is helpful and assures you of our efforts to combat spam. We also appreciate your patience when you have to manually delete the spam that does get through to your email.

Outlook 2000/XP Filtering

1. Go to the TOOLS menu, RULES WIZARD
2. Select the NEW tab.
3. In "Which type of rule do you want to create" select "Check Messages When They Arrive"
4. Click Next.
5. In "Which conditions do you want to check" check "with specific words in the subject"
6. In "Rule Description" click on the underlined word "specific words" type or copy the following: {Spam?}
7. click Add, click OK Click Next
8. In "What do you want to do with the message" check "Move it to the specified folder"
9. In "Rule Description" click on the underlined word "specified" Select SPAM or Trash folder. If you don't have a SPAM folder you can click the "new" button
   to add the folder.
10. Click OK, click Next, Next, Finish, OK.

Outlook Express Filtering

1. Go to the TOOLS menu, MESSAGE RULES and select the MAIL tab.
2. If you already have other rules click New, otherwise
3. In "Select the Conditions for your rule" check "Where the subject line contains"
4. In "Select the actions for your rule:" check "Move it to the specified folder"
5. In "Rule Description" click on the underlined word "contains specific words" type in the word: {Spam?}
6. click Add, click OK
7. In "Rule Description" click on the underlined word "specified" Select SPAM folder.
8. Click OK, OK, OK.

Eudora 5.2

1. In the TOOLS menu, select Filters.
2. Check the Incoming Box
3. Select Header Type: Subject
4. Contains: {Spam?}
5. In the Action area type Transfer to, Spam or Trash
6. Close the filters menu.

Netscape 7.x

1. Go to Window Menu, Mail & Newsgroups.
2. Go to Tools, Message Filters.
3. Click New.
4. Type in Filter Name: Spam Filter
5. Pull down on left side: Subject
6. Pull down in middle: contains
7. Type on right side: {Spam?}
8. Under "Perform this action", select "Move to folder".
9. Select the Trash folder, or create a folder called spam.
10. Select OK.
    

Mac OSX Mail

1. Go to Mail, Preferences.

   

2. Go to Rules

   

3. Click Add Rule

   

4. Pull down on left side: Subject
5. Pull down in middle: Begin with
6. Type on right side: {Spam?}
7. Under "Perform the following actions", select "Transfer Message".
8. Select the Junk folder, or create a folder called spam.
9. Select OK.

If you currently use an older email software that does not filter then the benefit of this service will be restricted to seeing spam more quickly.