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Reading and Deleting Spam from your Mail folders

All users are expected to delete or otherwise deal with messages marked as suspected spam for two reasons:

• The mail disks can rapidly fill up with undeleted suspected spam messages and the performance of the mail server will degrade as a consequence. There are other good practices that should also be followed to reduce this risk.
• Some messages marked as suspected spam will be genuine.

The following examples assume that spam has been deposited in a folder called suspect_spam on the mail server. This is the default if you used these instructions.

Instructions on how to access this suspect_spam folder are listed below for the 3 supported email clients within Informatics:

• Pine
• IMP - web interface
• Mozilla mail client

Pine Users

1. Adding your spam folder to your list of viewable folders.

   From the main pine menu, choose

   • (S)etup
   • collection(L)ists (this option may be on the next screen)
   • (A)dd Collection
   This should take you to a screen like:

   Nickname : mail.inf folders
   Server : mail.inf.ed.ac.uk/ssl
   Path :
   View :
   

   Fill in the fields above to create a new Folder Collection.
   Use "^G" command to get help specific help for each item, and use "^X" when finished.
   Use ^X to finish and exit the setup screens (saving if prompted) back to the main pine menu.

2. Viewing your Spam folder

   Now when you select (L) FOLDER LIST from the main screen, you should see an entry for "mail.inf folders", if you highlight that and open it. You'll see all the folders (except for the special INBOX folder) that are stored on mail.inf including suspect_spam.

   You can then open your spam folder and deal with the messages in the normal way.

IMP Users - mail.inf.ed.ac.uk

The most efficient way to deal with messages which have been tagged as "Spam" is to deal with spam regularly.

To see your folders held on the mail server, including suspect_spam, click on the "Folders" link at the top of the IMP interface to mail.inf.ed.ac.uk. Select the spam folder to see the messages waiting to be dealt with.

If the suspect_spam folder is not listed then click on the Show unsubscribed link, then tick the box next to the suspect_spam folder and select subscribe to folder(s) from the "Choose Action" menu.

To Delete Some Messages Only

To delete messages within IMP, you must first select those messages and mark them as deleted. You must then purge the deleted messages.

IMP allows only one page of messages to be deleted at a time. If there are a lot of messages waiting to be read or deleted, you can increase the number of messages on a single screen by clicking on "Options", then "Display Options" (under Other options). You can change the number of messages displayed per page to make dealing with spam more efficient.

To Delete All Messages in Folder

Proceed with caution

The spam filter will often put genuine messages in the suspect_spam folder. Make sure you have looked through the list of messages before deleting the folder's contents. (Remember that all staff now have an obligation under the Freedom of Information Act to respond to any FOI requests within 20 days)

You can select any genuine message and "move" or "copy" it to another folder using the links at the top right hand corner of the IMP window.

When you are sure you want to delete the entire contents - Select the suspect_spam folder from the pull-down Folders menu and select Empty Folder from the list of Actions available.

Mozilla

If Mozilla does not already display your "suspect_spam" folder along with other folders on the mail server in the left hand frame of your Mozilla window, then you must subscribe to this folder.

To do this, highlight your Informatics Mailbox in the left hand window, and select subscribe from the File menu. This will open a new window which allows you to subscribe or unsubscribe to any existing folders.

Mozilla will display a list of available folders. Select suspect_spam and click on the subscribe button on the right hand side of the window.

These messages can be selected and deleted, or dealt with in the usual way.